{"id":19021,"date":"2025-08-23T20:59:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T20:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/19021\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T20:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T20:59:14","slug":"russia-doing-everything-it-can-to-stop-me-meeting-with-putin-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/19021\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia doing everything it can to stop me meeting with Putin, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to negotiate an end to Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump, who has vowed to end what he calls the \u201cbloodbath\u201d in Ukraine, said he had begun the arrangements for a Putin-Zelensky meeting after a call with the Russian leader on Monday.<\/p>\n

But Mr Zelensky accused Russia of stalling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Russians are doing everything they can to prevent the meeting from taking place,\u201d he said yesterday at a press conference in Kyiv with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe meeting is one of the components of how to end the war. And since they don\u2019t want to end it, they will look for space to [avoid it],\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n

Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC in an interview yesterday that there is no agenda for such a summit.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin is ready to meet with Zelensky when the agenda would be ready for a summit. And this agenda is not ready at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The statement echoed Moscow\u2019s established rhetoric about a leaders\u2019 meeting being impossible unless certain conditions were met.<\/p>\n

\"Russia's<\/p>\n

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia on Friday. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n

Asked for his response to Mr Lavrov\u2019s comments and what the next steps are, Mr Trump told reporters: \u201cWell, we\u2019ll see. We\u2019re going to see if Putin and Zelensky will be working together. It\u2019s like oil and vinegar a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched in 2022. Analysts estimate that more than a million soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded and fighting is continuing unabated, with both sides also attacking energy facilities.<\/p>\n

Russia has maintained its long-standing demand for Ukraine to give up land it still holds in two eastern regions while proposing to freeze the front line in two more southerly regions Moscow claims fully as its own and possibly hand back small pieces of other Ukrainian territory it controls.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelensky meanwhile has dropped his demand for a lengthy ceasefire as a prerequisite for the leaders\u2019 meeting, even though he has previously said Ukraine cannot negotiate under the barrel of a gun.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, he called on his country\u2019s allies to pressure Russia into \u201cat least a minimally productive position\u201d, including by applying fresh sanctions if Russia showed no interest in moving towards peace.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the press conference with Mr Rutte, Mr Zelensky said they had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine by other states.<\/p>\n

He said the guarantees ought to be similar to Nato\u2019s Article 5, which considers an attack on one member of the alliance as an attack against all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the beginning of a big undertaking, and it is not easy, because guarantees consist of what our partners can give Ukraine, as well as what the Ukrainian army should be like, and where we can find opportunities for the army to maintain its strength,\u201d Mr Zelensky said.<\/p>\n

Mr Rutte said Nato allies and Ukraine are working together to make sure security guarantees are at such a robust level that Russia will never try to attack again.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobust security guarantees will be essential, and this is what we are now working on to define\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, military chiefs from the US and a number of European countries presented options to their national security advisers for providing security guarantees to Ukraine, officials said.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelensky\u2019s chief of staff Andriy Yermak told Ukrainian television yesterday that Kyiv expects to see the first drafts of the security guarantees proposals next week.<\/p>\n

Mr Zelensky added yesterday that Turkey has said it wants to be part of Ukraine\u2019s security guarantees, with responsibility for maritime security.<\/p>\n

When asked whether Turkey could consider sending a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine as part of security guarantees, a Turkish defence ministry source said on Thursday that a ceasefire should be secured before such decisions were finalised. President Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a written request for comment on Zelensky\u2019s remark.<\/p>\n

Estonia is ready to participate in the peacekeeping operation in Ukraine with a force of up to one company, the Baltic country\u2019s prime minister Kristen Michal said at a press conference with his Finnish counterpart in Tallinn yesterday.<\/p>\n

Mr Michal did not say how many troops this could entail.<\/p>\n

French president Emmanuel Macron and UK prime minister Keir Starmer have both spoken in favour of troop deployments in a post-war settlement as part of Ukraine\u2019s coalition of the willing, with German chancellor Friedrich Merz also signalling openness to German participation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ukrainian leader has repeatedly called for Putin to meet him, saying it is the only way to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,6586,13,14,6622,6,5446,6302,11,12,15,16,15892,6450,5,7,8,385,551,2263,5445,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-19021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-friedrich-merz","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-kyiv","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-mark-rutte","23":"tag-nato","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-turkey","28":"tag-ukraine","29":"tag-vladimir-putin","30":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky","31":"tag-world","32":"tag-world-news","33":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}