\u201cThree weeks ago, a representative of our business community called me with a question,\u201d Vladimir Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia\u2019s version of Davos, earlier this month. \u201cI\u2019ve known him for a very long time. We\u2019re not close, but I trust him\u2014he\u2019s a decent person.\u201d<\/p>\n
The businessman, Putin explained, had been invited to Kyiv and wanted to make sure the Russian president was aware. Putin said he told him that he could not act in any official capacity: \u201cThat should be handled by serious, specially trained people.\u201d According to Putin, the businessman replied that he would simply go, listen, and then report back on what the Ukrainians had to say. Putin agreed: \u201cFine. I can\u2019t forbid you from going. Go.\u201d Translating from Putin-speak, it meant that the businessman in question\u2014former owner of F.C. Chelsea and one of Russia\u2019s richest men, Roman Abramovich\u2014had Putin\u2019s full authorization to go, meet Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, and take the temperature in Kyiv.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThree weeks ago, a representative of our business community called me with a question,\u201d Vladimir Putin said at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1038009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7654],"tags":[286081,67654,286082,286083,286084,2000,299,129858,714,10546,71531,7705,10243,7070,657,333,658],"class_list":["post-1038008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ukraine","tag-alexander-rodnyansky","tag-alexei-navalny","tag-alexey-yusupov","tag-boris-berezovsky","tag-dominic-midgley","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-jared-kushner","tag-joe-biden","tag-kyiv","tag-roman-abramovich","tag-rustem-umerov","tag-sergey-lavrov","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelensky"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116780280308571290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1038009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}