KIEV (Reuters)-Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Russia is doing everything it can to prevent a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Russia’s Foreign Minister said the agenda for this summit was not ready.
The Ukrainian leader repeatedly asked Putin to meet him, saying that this is the only way to negotiate the end of the Russian war in Ukraine.
United States President Donald Trump, who promised to end what he calls a “blood bath” in Ukraine, said he had started preparations for a Putin-Zelensky meeting after a connection with the Russian leader on Monday.
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Zelensky accused Russia of being delaying.
“The Russians are doing everything they can to prevent the meeting,” he said on Friday at a press conference in Kiev with the Secretary-General of the Western Military Alliance Organization of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO), Mark Rutte.
“The meeting is one of the components of how to end the war. And how they do not want to end it, they will seek space to (avoid it),” he added.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC in an interview on Friday that there is no agenda for this summit.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the schedule is ready for a summit. And this schedule is not ready at all,” he said.
The declaration echoed Moscow’s rhetoric of the impossibility of a meeting between the two leaders unless certain conditions are met.
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Asked about his response to Lavrov’s comments and what are the next steps, Trump told reporters, “Well, we’ll see. Let’s see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. It’s a little like oil and vinegar.”
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians were killed in the large -scale invasion of Ukraine launched by Russia in 2022. Analysts estimate that more than one million soldiers on both sides have been killed or injured, and the fighting remains uninterrupted, with both sides also attacking energy facilities.
Russia has maintained its longtime requirement for Ukraine to give up the lands that still hold in two regions of the east, while proposing to freeze the front line in two southern regions that Moscow fully claims as their own and possibly returning small parts of another Ukrainian territory that controls.
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Zelensky, on the other hand, gave up demanding a long ceasefire as a prerequisite for the leaders’ meeting, although he said earlier that Ukraine cannot negotiate under the pipe of a weapon.
On Friday, he asked his country’s allies to press Russia to “at least a minimally productive position,” including applying new sanctions if Russia shows no interest in moving toward peace.
