Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he is willing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December to discuss ending the war.
Zelensky made the statement in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle released on Saturday.
Asked if he would meet Putin if both were invited to the December 14-15 summit, Zelensky said, “Yes, of course.”
“We have to come. We have to meet, to speak, and make decisions. It’s not about words. What I will tell him or what he wants to tell me, it doesn’t matter,” he said, adding that the key issue was achieving “results”.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had not decided whether Putin would attend the summit.
“We do not know yet whether we will be going to Miami,” he said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
Peskov also repeated Putin’s demand that Zelensky travel to Moscow for any face-to-face talks.
“If he really wants to meet Putin, then Putin has said before that he can fly to Moscow,” he said.
The United States, which holds the G20 presidency this year, is pushing to revive stalled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner recently visited Moscow and Kyiv, while US President Donald Trump and Putin held a phone conversation.
Zelensky described the US negotiators’ visits as a “good signal”, particularly because they travelled to both Moscow and Kyiv.
The Ukrainian president also said he planned to meet Trump in late September as Washington pushes for renewed direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
Zelensky said Ukraine was in a stronger position for negotiations than it was last year.
“Ukraine now is much more stronger than last year on the battlefield. That’s why we think that we have now (a) good position for negotiations,” he said.
Several previous rounds of talks have failed, with both sides maintaining their positions amid continued fighting and long-range strikes.
Zelensky also urged Ukraine’s allies to provide more interceptor missiles for US-made Patriot air defence systems, saying supplies had been reduced after the United States used large numbers during its war with Iran.
He said Washington had the “political will to sell and to help, but the production is not too big”.
He also called on European allies to provide more military support, saying, “All the Europeans who really support us have what we need.”
Discussion0