Zelenski refuses Putin's invitation to Moscow: “He comes to Kiev” / the response of the Kremlin leader
Volodimir Zelenski and Vladimir Putin. Collage: Ion Mateș / Hotnews. Photo: Profimedia, Shutterstock
“I cannot go to Moscow while Ukraine is attacked every day,” Volodimir Zelenski said on Friday, for ABC News, after Vladimir Putin called in Moscow for discussions on ceasing fire.
“He can come to Kiev. I can't go to Moscow when my country is under rocket attacks, attacked every day. I can't go to the capital of this terrorist,” said Ukraine President on Friday in an interview with ABC News. Putin “understands this,” Zelenski added.
The Ukrainian president had also declared in Paris on Thursday after the discussions with the leaders of the will and President Donald Trump, that a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin is necessary for the end of the war, but he does not agree that it will take place in Moscow, as the Kremlin chief proposed on Wednesday.
Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, at the press conference that ended his visit to China, that he “does not exclude” direct discussions with the Ukrainian president and invites him to Moscow: “If Zelenski is willing to come to Moscow, and such a meeting will take place.”
In the same statement, Putin warned, however, that Russia will reach its goals in Ukraine, if negotiations with Kiev fail, ensuring that its troops remain “offensive” throughout the Ukrainian front.
The desire expressed by Zelenski repeatedly-for the meeting with Putin to take place in a third country-was listed by Vladimir Putin as “excessive”.
“I will repeat again: if someone really wants to meet us, we are prepared. The best place for this is the capital of Russia, the city of Moscow,” the leader from Moscow, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, said on Friday.
On August 19, one day after the meeting between Volodimir Zelenski and European leaders with Donald Trump in Washington, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Putin told the US president that he had agreed with a bilateral meeting with Zelenski within two weeks.
Later, Trump said that “preparations” began for a Putin-Zenski meeting, while the Kremlin counselor, Yuri Usakov, contradicted the US President's statement. He stated that “there was no agreement between Putin and Trump in this regard.”
