The leaders of Ukraine and Russia signaled that their previous refusal to talk to each other has softened, following US President Donald Trump’s promise to end Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
In an interview late Tuesday with television host Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his preparedness to talk to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end the war, in the presence of Ukraine’s partners.
His statement echoed remarks to Bloomberg News last month that he is ready to sit at the negotiating table with Russia alongside the US and the European Union.
Zelensky has long ruled out direct talks with Putin. But with Trump’s return to the White House and Russian troops continuing to push forward in eastern Ukraine, the bid to end the war, now in its third year, has a new urgency.
“If this is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine, definitely we’ll go for this setup,” said Zelensky when asked by Morgan how he’d feel sitting opposite the Russian leader. “What does my attitude to him matter?”
“Talking to Putin at all – one conversation with this murderer, is already a compromise,” Zelenskiy said.
Putin, who secured a fifth presidential term last March in elections tightly controlled by the Kremlin, has said he can’t negotiate a deal with Zelensky, whom he called an illegitimate president.
Zelensky’s term formally ended last May, though new presidential elections cannot be held under martial law, which Ukraine declared at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Nevertheless, Moscow’s position also appears to have shifted. Despite Zelensky’s “major problems” in terms of legitimacy, “the Russian side remains open to negotiations,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday.
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