Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter to the Russian leader, saying it would be “wrong to simply wait” until the war in Europe returns to Washington’s attention, Ada Derana reported.
In the letter, more than 1,800 words long, Zelensky proposed a full ceasefire for the duration of any negotiations and said peace could come only “through direct engagement between” Kyiv and Moscow. Putin had earlier on Thursday ruled out a ceasefire.
US President Donald Trump said it “would be great” if the two leaders met. The Kremlin confirmed it had received the letter and said Putin would be briefed on it.
The tone was defiant. Zelensky drew attention to Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian territory and remarked that “after 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll” on Putin. As before, the Kremlin replied that Zelensky was welcome to meet Putin in Moscow.
The notable element was Kyiv’s public acknowledgement of the US “fully focused on the issue of Iran” — the diplomatic track that has absorbed most of the Trump administration’s bandwidth in recent weeks, including the latest round of edits on a Hormuz-uranium proposal.
Speaking to foreign journalists in St Petersburg without apparently having read the letter, Putin said he was “certainly prepared and willing to reach an agreement with Ukraine” but said compromises were needed. He suggested that with Trump busy with Iran, the EU could press Zelensky into surrendering territory.
Putin’s longstanding position is that Ukraine should withdraw from the four partially occupied regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and abandon NATO membership ambitions. Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, arguing it would embolden Russia to invade again as it did in 2022, eight years after annexing Crimea.
Previous talks in Geneva, Abu Dhabi and Istanbul have failed, and ceasefire negotiations have stalled in recent months. A three-day Easter ceasefire in May was the last formal pause in the fighting; Russia has continued to frame the war as approaching an end even as Ukraine has launched its largest drone attack on Moscow since the full-scale invasion began.
