Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had reached"agreements " with US President Donald Trump to end the war in Ukraine during their meeting in Alaska last month. The statement was made at a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Chinese city of Tianjin.

"The understandings reached at the recent Russian-American summit in Alaska, I hope, also go in this direction, opening the way to peace in Ukraine," Putin was quoted as saying by Russian and international media.

The Russian leader, however, did not specify whether he would agree to peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky through the mediation of Trump. He added that he had already informed Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the results of the talks with Trump and promised to inform other SCO heads of state of the agreements reached.

After the meeting in Alaska on August 15, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that Putin had agreed to security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a possible future peace agreement, although Moscow has not yet officially confirmed this.

At the same time, in his speech to the SCO, Putin continued to defend his decision to attack Ukraine, again blaming the West for the war:"This crisis was not caused by the Russian attack on Ukraine, but is the result of a coup in Ukraine, supported and provoked by the West."

He also attributed the war to "the West's continued attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO", which he said posed a"direct threat to Russia's security".

Putin's statement comes days after Russia carried out its second-largest airstrike on Ukraine since the start of the war and after French President Emmanuel Macron said that Putin was facing a deadline set by Trump of Monday, September 2, to agree to peace talks with Zelensky.

According to Macron, if the Russian leader does not agree,"it will show again that President Putin has manipulated President Trump ".