MOSCOW: Russia on Friday ruled out the prospect of an immediate summit between President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying “no meeting” was planned until a clear agenda was prepared.
NATO chief Mark Rutte on Friday visited Kyiv to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump had raised expectations for a swift summit between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents by saying earlier in the week that they had agreed to meet.
“They don’t get along too well, for obvious reasons,” Trump told reporters in Washington.
Lavrov questioned the Ukrainian president’s legitimacy and repeated Russia’s conditions for a meeting between Putin and Zelensky to end the Ukraine war.
“There is no meeting planned,” Lavrov said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker”.
Lavrov told the US broadcaster Putin was “ready to meet Zelensky” as soon as an agenda was prepared, adding that the agenda was “not ready at all”.
In Kyiv, speaking alongside Rutte, Zelensky said Ukraine had “no agreements with the Russians”, saying Ukraine had agreed only with Trump on how the diplomatic direction could proceed.
On Thursday, he had accused Russia of “trying to wriggle out of holding a meeting”, adding that Moscow wanted to continue the offensive.
Trump’s diplomatic push
The question of eventual security guarantees for Ukraine has been front and centre during the latest US-led diplomatic push to broker a peace deal to end the conflict.
Trump earlier said Russia had agreed to some Western security guarantees for Kyiv.
But Moscow later cast doubt on any such arrangement, Lavrov saying on Wednesday that discussing them without Russia was “a utopia, a road to nowhere”.
“When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees, I honestly do not yet know who is threatening them,” said Zelensky, who wants foreign troops in Ukraine to deter Russian attacks in the future.
The Kremlin has long said it would never accept that, citing Ukraine’s NATO ambition as a threat to Russia’s security.
“There are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelensky said no to everything,” Lavrov told NBC.
On a visit to Kyiv, Rutte said security guarantees were needed to ensure “Russia will uphold any deal and will never ever again attempt to take one square kilometre of Ukraine”.
