Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he is ready to travel to the G20 summit in Miami later this year to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin face-to-face.
“We have to meet, to speak and make decisions,” Zelensky told German news outlet Deutsche Welle in an interview Friday.
The Ukrainian leader thinks the Kremlin is paying a “big price” for small gains on the battlefield, with Russia estimated to be losing more than 30,000 soldiers a month.
“So that’s why we think that we have now good position for negotiations,” Zelensky said.
The two leaders have not met in person since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the meeting would offer a rare opening for direct talks, as efforts to restart negotiations have stalled this year.
But the Kremlin all but shut that down Saturday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “we don’t know yet whether we’ll be going to Miami,” while Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said Putin’s attendance “has not even been discussed” in Moscow — both stressing Russia’s longstanding line that if Zelensky wants to meet Putin, he should come to Moscow instead.
That’s something Zelensky has repeatedly said he wouldn’t do.
The G20 summit — which Putin has not personally attended since 2019 — is taking place in Miami on Dec. 14 and 15.
Meanwhile, Russia has unleashed another deadly barrage of missiles and drones across Ukraine, with Ukrainian local authorities reporting at least 11 people killed and 96 wounded over the past day.
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