Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his willingness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit scheduled for December. This statement, made in an interview released on Saturday, comes as diplomatic efforts to resolve the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia intensify.
Zelensky has also announced he plans to meet Trump in late September, as Washington pushes for fresh face-to-face talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
Russia was sustaining heavy battlefield losses, paying a “big price” for “very slow moves on the battlefield”. he said. Kyiv has said the talks could happen as early as this month, but the Kremlin on Monday said it was “too early” to discuss a venue or dates. Washington is seeking to kick-start long-stalled negotiations to find a solution to the conflict, Europe’s deadliest since World War II, with US negotiators recently visiting Kyiv and Moscow and President Donald Trump and Putin this week holding talks on the conflict over the phone.
Russia’s finance minister has already attended one G20 meeting, causing discomfort among some of Ukraine’s allies, and a Russian diplomat said Saturday that Moscow will also send some officials to a G20 energy meeting in Houston next week. In the Deutsche Welle interview, which took place Friday in Canada, Zelensky said that Witkoff and Kushner’s visit was a “good signal”, and it was important the pair had visited Kyiv as well as Moscow. “It’s respect to our people,” he said.
