Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to go to Moscow to negotiate a diplomatic deal, raising the issue for the first time in an interview with ABC News.
“He can come to Kiev“, Zelensky said. “I can't go to Moscow when my country is under missile attacks every day. I can't go to this terrorist's capital.“
Putin “understands that“, he told the interviewer.
Zelensky also said that Putin's offer was intended to “postpone the meeting“ and confirmed that he was “ready for the meeting“ in “any format“.
Putin “is playing games with the United States“, Zelensky added.
“If someone does not want to meet during the war, of course, he can offer something that may not be acceptable to me or others“, the Ukrainian president also said.
Zelensky has repeatedly stated that Putin is not looking for a meeting with him while he continues to wage the war in Ukraine.
The Russian president said on Wednesday that “he has never been against meeting with Zelensky“.
“If Zelensky is ready, let him come to Moscow“, Putin said. “This meeting will happen.“
President Donald Trump has made a meeting between the two leaders a priority in his efforts to broker a peace deal.
“I'm going to put them in the same room eventually,“ he told Fox News in August.
Trump made a three-way meeting between the leaders of the United States, Russia and Ukraine the goal of his summit in Alaska last month with Putin and later said that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky would take place once the Ukrainian leader came to the White House.
“There will be a three-way meeting,“ the president said last week in an interview with The Daily Caller. "Bilateral...I don't know about that," he said.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week that it was "clear" that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelensky would not take place.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha this week named seven countries - Austria, the Vatican, Switzerland, Turkey and three Gulf states - that he said were ready to host peace talks that Zelensky would attend.