‘Putin ready to meet Zelenskyy, but agenda not ready’: Russia on Ukraine peace talks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that there is no agenda for a future summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing Zelenskyy of saying “no to everything”.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” Lavrov said Putin had made it plain that he was willing to meet with Zelenskyy to discuss a possible solution to stop the war in Ukraine as long as there was an appropriate agenda for such a meeting, which he claimed was currently missing.

Both Russia and Ukraine are trying to prove to US President Donald Trump that they are willing to try to reach a peace deal, which Trump has stated he wishes to facilitate, while accusing the other of being insincere or unwilling to negotiate in good faith.

“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,” Lavrov told NBC, saying no meeting was therefore planned for now.

Lavrov said Russia had agreed to show flexibility on a number of issues raised by Trump at a US-Russia summit last week, but accused Ukraine of not showing the same flexibility in talks with Trump and European allies that followed in Washington.

“He (Trump) clearly indicated – it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership (for Ukraine), including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” said Lavrov.

“He even said no to, as I said, to cancelling legislation banning the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”

Trump had imposed an August 8 deadline for Putin to agree an end to the war or face new sanctions against Russia and countries that buy its oil, but instead agreed to meet the Kremlin leader at a summit in Alaska last Friday.

Since then, Russia has shown little movement, maintaining most of its longstanding demands while proposing to freeze the front line in two Ukrainian regions it claims as its own, and expressing a readiness to potentially hand back relatively small pieces of Ukrainian territory it controls.

Putin wants Ukraine to give up all of the eastern Donbas region, renounce ambitions to join NATO, remain neutral and keep Western troops out of the country, three sources familiar with top-level Kremlin thinking have told Reuters.

Zelenskyy, who has said he does not want to “gift” Russia any territory, said on Friday the Kremlin was doing everything it could to make sure that a meeting between him and Putin did not take place. He called on Ukraine’s allies to apply fresh sanctions on Moscow if it showed no desire to end the war.