PARIS: Russia said on Tuesday (Aug 19) that any deal on Ukraine should ensure its own security and that of Russians in Ukraine, as Kyiv’s allies met to discuss possible peace talks, after suggestions that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could sit down with President Vladimir Putin.
Hopes of a breakthrough rose when the Ukrainian president and European leaders met in Washington on Monday with US President Donald Trump, who said he had also spoken by phone with his Russian counterpart.
But Russia warned that any solution of the war in Ukraine must respect “Russia’s security interests”, with its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adding that any meeting between the leaders “must be prepared very thoroughly”.
Face-to-face talks between Zelenskyy and Putin would be their first since Russia’s brutal invasion three-and-a-half years ago.
The Ukraine war, which has killed tens of thousands of people, has ground to a virtual stalemate despite a few recent Russian advances, defying Trump’s push to end it.
Lavrov told state TV channel Rossiya 24 that any deal to end the conflict must ensure the rights of “Russian-speaking people who live in Ukraine”.
His comments came as France and Britain were co-hosting a virtual meeting of about 30 of Kyiv’s allies known as the “coalition of the willing” to “keep them up to date on what was decided”, President Emmanuel Macron told French news channel LCI.
He added that work on setting the peace talks will start after that, hinting at Geneva as a possible location.
Macron also voiced wider European concern about Moscow’s territorial ambitions, after suggestions that Ukraine could be forced to concede parts of the embattled Donbas region still under its control.
On the streets of Kyiv, there was scepticism about whether the latest talks could end the grinding conflict.
“The main problem is Putin himself doesn’t want it,” Anton, 32, who works in a warehouse, told AFP.
“They can meet as many times as they want but Putin doesn’t need it and Donald Trump doesn’t really know what to do.”
But in Moscow, some people were more hopeful. “I hope we can agree on mutually beneficial terms,” said Vyacheslav, 23, who works for the government.
He added that it would have been better if the meeting between the presidents had happened “at the very beginning”.
OPEN TO TALKS
Trump, who last week held talks with Putin in Alaska, wrote on his Truth Social network after Monday’s meetings that he called Putin to start planning peace talks with Zelenskyy.
A three-way summit with both leaders would then be held, he added.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was part of the European delegation, said Putin had agreed to the bilateral meeting within the next two weeks.
