Russian President Vladimir Putin was playing a game by inviting his Ukrainian counterpart to Moscow for talks, Zelensky said, making an equally facetious reciprocal invitation to Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has an open invitation to Moscow for talks, the Kremlin said, prompting Zelensky to reply the dangerous invitation is only made by Russia as a cover for their not wanting to speak to him at all. Responding in kind, Zelensky issued a reciprocal invitation to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to come to Kyiv.
Speaking on Friday, Zelensky said: “Of course, it is impossible for me to meet with Putin in Moscow. It’s the same as meeting with Putin in Kyiv. I can also invite him to Kyiv, let him come. I publicly invite him, if he dares, of course.”
Nevertheless, Zelensky said he did in fact want to speak with Putin in person, and has recently remarked the key remaining questions of the peace process can only be agreed in face-to-face leaders talks, as only Presidents have the authority to resolve them definitively.
Zelensky’s tongue-in-cheek invitation for Putin to come to Kyiv “if he dares” follows comments by former Russian ambassador to the United States turned negotiator Yury Ushakov on Wednesday when he said “if Zelensky is truly ready for a meeting, we would be happy to welcome him to Moscow”. These were later followed up by President Putin’s personal spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who claimed the only place Russia would consider meeting Zelensky was at the Kremlin and all other suggestions “are moot”.
Meanwhile other talks progress. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he’d managed to extract a personal promise from Putin to stop striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure for the coming days as weather forecasters predict temperatures could plummet at low as -28c (-18f) overnight early next week.
Speaking on Thursday night, President Trump said: “I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week and he agreed to do that… I have to tell you it was very nice.” The Ukrainians “almost didn’t believe it but they were very happy about it”, he added.
Both Kyiv and Moscow were initially silent on President Trump’s statement, but after the first night of the partial ceasefire but cautiously conceded it was in apparent effect as Friday wore on.
Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S. met for trilateral talks in a new format for the first time last week, with the sides agreeing to meet again as early as this weekend to keep discussions going. This now seems to be in peril, however, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says those American delegates Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner who led last week would not be attending this time.
The talks may be delayed, President Zelensky said, because the U.S. is so focussed on the Iran situation. The Guardian reported this morning that Zelensky remarked: “It is very important for us that everyone we agreed with be present at the meeting, because everyone is expecting feedback… But the date or the location may change – because, in our view, something is happening in the situation between the United States and Iran. And those developments could likely affect the timing.”
Zelensky also emphasised the importance of negotiations leading to in-person leader talks between himself and President Putin, because there are some questions of the war so important that they can’t be agreed by any lesser person than Presidents themselves. He said: “I have repeatedly said that such complex issues will be resolved at the leadership level, and this is understandable, because it is the leaders who have the appropriate mandate”.
The most obvious area where an agreement would be beyond delegations or negotiators without Presidents in the room is the fate of the Donbas, a coal-rich region that encompasses the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. It is largely occupied by Russian forces and some areas of it have been held by Moscow for over a decade, going back to the 2014 capture of Donetsk.
All sides have different ideas about how to resolve the problem: while Ukraine basically sticks to its maximalist guns on wanting 100-per-cent of its territory back, it has expressed willignness to negotiate a longer-term ceasefire with both sides sticking to the land they already occupy. Russia, on the other hand, has demanded Ukraine hand over the final parts of Donbas over to become permanent Russian territory in perpetuity in return for the cessation of hostilities. The United States has suggested both sides pull back from the front lines, with the resulting gap being transformed into a “free economic zone”.
Zelensky reflected on this issue that no compromise has been reached yet and that the Russian demands are too great to bear. Ukraine, he said, is willing to compromise, but not on the matters Moscow wants it to compromise on. He said: “The issue of control over a particular territory, even a free economic zone, must also be fair. Namely, Ukraine’s control over the territories that we control. This is roughly our vision, which was first emphasized in Abu Dhabi in a trilateral format.”
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