St Petersburg: Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected a proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a face-to-face meeting on the four-year-old war, saying he sees “no point” in it.
Thursday’s letter, the first public message Zelensky has written directly to Putin since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in 2022, made a sweeping critique of the Russian leader’s 26 years in power as well as some taunts about his age.
Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum on Friday, Putin described Zelensky’s open letter proposing the meeting as “boorish”.
“Is it a way to create conditions for personal meetings and talks, or create an environment which makes any personal meetings impossible?” Putin said at a question-and-answer session during the annual forum. “I think it’s the second.”
Putin added that a Russian businessman, whom he did not identify, had travelled to Kyiv last month and met Zelensky to hear his offer of a personal meeting.
But Putin said he saw “no point” in such a meeting at present, especially after a drone attack by Ukraine on a college dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region last month that Moscow said killed 21 and wounded scores of others.
Responding to another question from the forum moderator, Putin said that Russians were watching the actions of their armed forces in the war.
“Keep working, brothers,” he said to applause from the hall.
In response to barbs from Zelensky about his age and long stint in power, 73-year-old Putin pointed at other global leaders who were older, adding that “the main thing isn’t age; the main thing is the ability to work”.
He also mocked Zelensky’s difficult Oval Office meeting in 2025 and thanked US President Donald Trump for “educating [Zelensky] before the eyes of the whole world”, and teaching him a proper dress code.
“There is still a lot to be done,” he said.
Zelensky acknowledged shifting priorities in the United States, saying it would be wrong to wait for the Trump administration to return its attention to ending the fighting in Ukraine while it was heavily focused on the Iran war.
In Washington, Trump said on Thursday that it “would be great” if Putin and Zelensky met.
Putin had previously offered Zelensky the chance to come to Moscow for talks, an offer the Ukrainian leader pointedly rejected. Last month, Putin said he didn’t rule out a meeting in a third country, but only if there was a deal to sign.
On Thursday, Putin again rejected Zelensky’s push for an immediate ceasefire, arguing that Moscow wanted a comprehensive settlement, not a temporary truce.
Putin said Russia was open to compromise on Ukraine in line with understandings reached at his summit last year with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, adding that Ukraine needed to accept them to make a deal to end the conflict.
Asked about Iran, Putin voiced hope for an eventual deal to secure lasting peace. He shrugged off claims that Moscow had provided Iran with satellite imagery, saying Tehran could use widely available commercial outlets.
“As for weapons, Iran hasn’t asked us for them, and we haven’t supplied any weapons to Iran,” he said, adding that Russia stands ready to take enriched uranium for storage as part of a potential peace deal, and that Moscow has stayed in contact with Iran, the US and Israel.
Global turbulence
In a speech at the forum earlier on Friday, Putin said that developing countries have gained an increasingly important role in the global economy, while the share of global output produced by Western countries has shrunk.
He accused the West of undermining the global economy and financial system through unilateral sanctions. By freezing Russian assets abroad with sanctions, Western nations had eroded trust in their own currencies, he argued.
Putin has used the St Petersburg forum, likened to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to showcase his country’s economic advances and encourage foreign investment.
While Western officials and business leaders have stayed away, Russia has sought guests from elsewhere – including a number of online influencers and other personalities – to underline its declared goal of promoting a “multipolar world”.
Hours before the forum opened on Wednesday, a Ukrainian drone attack set a St Petersburg oil terminal ablaze and also hit the nearby Kronstadt naval base, setting fire to the Russian guided-missile corvette Boikiy, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.
Satellite images and unverified social media footage showed fire crews working to control the fires on board the ship, which was in dry dock at the time.
Putin, meanwhile, declared that Russia was “calmly and resolutely” moving towards its goals in Ukraine. He acknowledged the damage from Ukrainian drone attacks and vowed to build up air defences.
Schroeder meeting
In another development, it emerged that Putin held a one-on-one meeting with former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that was “good and friendly”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday, as reported by Russian news agencies.
“The discussion was friendly. It was in the form of a tête-à-tête, one-on-one,” the agencies quoted Ushakov as saying. “I honestly don’t know any of the details. It took place in Moscow, in the Kremlin.”
Schroeder was the German chancellor from 1998 to 2005, when his Social Democratic Party was voted out of office. He subsequently worked for Russian state companies and cultivated a close relationship with Putin.
Last month, Putin suggested that he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, with Schroeder as his preferred partner.
But European Union foreign ministers at a meeting in Brussels rejected any role for Schroeder, with the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas saying that would allow the former chancellor to “be sitting on both sides of the table”.
AP, Bloomberg
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