Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reported to be pondering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer of a bilateral summit in Moscow. Zelensky’s spokesperson Yulia Mendel said yesterday that Zelensky will respond. “The reaction of the head of state will be definitely provided,” Mendel said, reported the Ukrainian news site 112International. The head of the Luhansk breakaway republic, Leonid Pasechnik, responded to Zelensky’s original offer saying that he would be willing to meet with Zelensky somewhere on the front line.
Leonid Kravchuk, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), rejected the idea of a meeting in Moscow. “The President of Ukraine will never go to Moscow to negotiate on war in Donbas. If Putin comes up with the idea of talks on a global scale of relations between Ukraine and Russia, then it can only be a neutral country,” Kravchuk said. While Putin did propose that the two Presidents should discuss bilateral relations, he suggested that Zelensky should discuss the war in the Donbas with the heads of the two breakaway republics. Kravchuk had earlier demanded that the TCG talks should no longer be held in Minsk, a proposal which Putin denounced as “a search for such reasons to dodge discussing Donbas problems and bury them [Minsk Agreements] once and for all.”
