Ukraine President Volodimir Zelenski, while holding a press conference in Paris on March 27, 2025. Photo: Julien de Rosa / AFP / Profimedia
Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski has announced that he will meet “probably Sunday” with the new Pope Leon XIV, specifying that this will depend on diplomatic evolutions with Russia, AFP reports.
“Probably Sunday, if things are going well. But we still don't know how this week will end,” Zelenski said in an interview on Tuesday, among which the French Journal Libération, two days before the first Russian-Ukrainian discussions expected in Turkey.
The new Pope Leon XIV is to celebrate the inaugural liturgy on Sunday in Saint Peter Square, in the Vatican, to which many foreign leaders are expected, notes Agerpres.
Prior to this, Volodimir Zelenski proposed to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to meet “personally” in Turkey on Thursday, for the first peace discussions between Ukrainians and Russians from the end of the first bilateral negotiations from the spring of 2022, a few weeks after the Russian invasion.
So far, the Kremlin has not responded to the offer of the Ukrainian president, avoiding specifying the composition of the Russian delegation that will go to Turkey.
The result of these Russian-Ukrainian discussions will depend, it seems, the agenda of Zelenski to meet with Turkish President Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday or Thursday, regardless of the situation.
“We arrived at a point where we do not know what will happen tomorrow,” the leader from Kiev said in the interview given on Tuesday.
On Monday, Zelenski discussed by Pope Leon XIV for the first time since the election of the new Pontiff and guest in Ukraine, a country devastated by the large-scale Russian invasion.
The day before, on Sunday, Pope Leon appealed to the “great powers of the world” to stop the war and plead for a “straight and sustainable” peace to Ukraine.
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