Lavrov Says ‘No Meeting Planned’ Between Putin and Zelensky
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Lavrov Says ‘No Meeting Planned’ Between Putin and Zelensky
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says there are no plans for a Putin-Zelensky meeting. U.S. President Donald Trump had suggested such a meeting was imminent. Lavrov’s remarks appeared to harden that stance after days of vague statements. Putin has previously indicated he would only meet Zelensky if a deal to end the war had already been worked out.
“President Putin said clearly that he is ready to meet, provided this meeting is really going to have an agenda, a presidential agenda,” Lavrov told NBC’s Meet the Press. “There is no meeting planned.”
Trump had announced after hosting Zelensky and European leaders at the White House on Monday that preparations were apparently underway for a face-to-face meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders, to be followed by a trilateral summit that would include him.
Putin has previously indicated he would only meet Zelensky if a deal to end the war had already been worked out in advance. Lavrov’s remarks on Friday appeared to harden that stance after days of vague statements from Moscow suggesting it was open to the idea in principle but not ready to commit.
“President Trump suggested after Anchorage several points which we share, and on some of them we agreed to show some flexibility,” Lavrov said, referring to the recent U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska. That meeting was widely seen as an attempt to defuse Trump’s threats of secondary tariffs against Russia if it refused to agree to a quick settlement of the war.
Ukraine-Russia war latest: Plans for Putin-Zelensky summit ‘not ready at all’ says Kremlin in blow to Trump
Sergei Lavrov casts doubt on whether Putin-Zelensky meeting will take place. Comments come just a week after Trump met face-to-face with Putin for talks aimed at ending the three-year-old conflict. Zelensky said Moscow was doing ‘everything’ to ensure that a meeting between him and Putin could not take place on Friday.
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Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has cast doubt on whether a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky will take place, in a blow to Donald Trump’s plan for a peace deal in Ukraine.
In an interview with NBC News, Lavrov said that the agenda for a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders was “not ready at all”.
His comments come just a week after Trump met face-to-face with Putin for talks aimed at ending the three-year-old conflict. The US president also met with Zelensky and European leaders on Monday.
Lavrov said Russia had agreed to be flexible on a number of points raised by Trump but that Moscow’s demands for a peace deal were unchanged.
“When President Trump brought … those issues to the meeting in Washington, it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no Nato membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” he said.
On Friday afternoon, Zelensky said Moscow was doing “everything” to ensure that a meeting between him and Putin could not take place.