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Ukraine and Russia are due to hold peace talks after the US midterm elections, President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed on Wednesday.
The US-led summit, expected to be held in the United Arab Emirates’ capital, Abu Dhabi, would be the first face-to-face talks between the two warring nations since President Trump lifted sanctions on Moscow.
The talks, originally penciled in for the end of next month, could now happen as soon as Nov. 10, a week after Tuesday’s midterm elections, Zelensky told the UK Sun.
The summit would only take place at the “technical level,” Zelensky clarified at a press conference Wednesday with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten in The Hague. However, the hope is the talks could pave the way for a trilateral summit between the Ukrainian leader, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to the British outlet from his fortified headquarters in the capital, Kyiv, Zelensky also issued a warning to Trump, who has accused him of trying to block a peace deal.
“If the United States, our strong partner, understands that Putin’s goal is to occupy us and to destroy us, they can’t be on Putin’s side,” he said, while insisting he was open to negotiations with Russia.
“We are ready to speak, we are ready for negotiations, any kind of format, we are even ready to speak about any kind of topics, sensitive topics for us,” he continued.
“It may not be fair even to discuss some topics, but we are ready, because I don’t want to show that we are stopping the negotiation process.”
It comes amid deteriorating relations between Washington and Kyiv, with President Trump telling reporters at the White House last week that Russia had “been fine on Ukraine.”
His special envoy, Steve Witkoff, further enraged Ukraine when he addressed Putin as “Sir” during peace talks in St. Petersburg — and described the tyrant as “a humanitarian.”
Zelensky, meanwhile, described Putin as “a deeply Soviet person,” adding that Ukrainians who survived live in the USSR understand Russia’s actions better than Americans do.
“His [Putin’s] reality, his mentality, we understand it because my generation were in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, [in] the period of [the] USSR,” he said.
“Putin’s personal attitude to Ukraine is that he hates us. He thinks that all our territory is his territory and his personal goal is to occupy it and to destroy it.”
In a separate briefing on Wednesday, Zelensky dismissed calls from President Trump for him to step aside and hold fresh elections, despite around 20% of his country currently under the occupation of a foreign power.
“President Trump can say whatever he wants about me personally, but not about Ukraine,” he said.
“When he says something about Ukraine, I respond because I have a responsibility to defend our country,” Zelensky told reporters.
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Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Putin used most of his phone call with European leaders to deliver a lecture on medieval Slavic history, rather than move forward with peace talks.
In the first call between Putin and European leaders in months, Russia’s president subjected the others on the call to an almost 90-minute rant about what he called the “initial reasons for the conflict,” the Financial Times reported.
The prospect of an immediate cease-fire, Ukraine’s main demand, was barely discussed during the call, which was initially scheduled for less than half an hour between Putin, Finland’s president Alexander Stubb, and Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre, the outlet reported.
