“I don’t see any point for now,” he said when asked whether he would take up Zelensky’s offer while speaking at Russia’s annual economic forum in St Petersburg on Friday.<\/p>\n
“Was it a way to create the conditions for a face-to-face meeting or a way not to set up a face-to-face meeting? I think it was the second.”<\/p>\n
After hearing Putin’s response Zelensky said Russia “was choosing war again” .<\/p>\n
“He just doesn’t want to end the war. I think that many in the world were disappointed by this answer,” he wrote on Telegram.<\/p>\n
During his remarks addressing Zelensky’s letter, Putin restated his position that a ceasefire would only allow Ukraine to regroup, while concessions Moscow is seeking from Kyiv remain unmet.<\/p>\n
“The only point is for the Ukrainian side to halt the advance of our armed forces. But we need agreements – not for six months, not for three months, but for the long term,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Let the experts get to work and come up with some solutions. After that, we can meet.”<\/p>\n
Putin said he would only end the war when Russia’s goals had been met.<\/p>\n
“Military actions will end some day, we assume. Without a doubt, they will end once we have achieved the goals we have set for ourselves.”<\/p>\n
Russia’s longstanding position is that Ukraine should withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as abandon efforts to join Nato.<\/p>\n
But Kyiv has refused to give up any territory, arguing that any concessions to Moscow would embolden it to invade again in the future, noting its full-scale invasion came eight years after it annexed the Crimean peninsula. <\/p>\n
Zelensky had stated in his letter that “after 26 years in power, age is beginning to take its toll” on Putin, while drawing attention to a recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory – including one on St Petersburg on Thursday he described as “paying a visit”.<\/p>\n
Putin said the letter contained “some rather rude remarks”. <\/p>\n
The content of Zelensky’s letter had raised hopes of peace in some quarters, including the White House.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump said “it would be great” if the two leaders did meet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I don’t see any point for now,” he said when asked whether he would take up Zelensky’s offer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-623250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}