Putin warns that he will only meet with Zelensky when they have a pre-agreement to end the war

The Kremlin has advanced this Sunday that the Russian president, Vladimir Putinwill only meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskywhen both states have advanced in a pre-agreement that can put an end to the military offensive on Ukraine. “Putin never refused such a meeting and a meeting is hypothetically possible, but for it to take place there needs to be a specific and mature document prepared by the two delegations,” said the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov. From Russia they lower the expectations of a soon agreement as a result of the negotiations that they maintain with the Ukrainian delegation in Turkey.

Peskov has stated that Russia still remembers the failure of Ukraine’s seven-year implementation of the Minsk Peace Accords for the donbas, one of the arguments used by the Kremlin to launch the so-called “special military operation” to prevent a “genocide” in the pro-Russian east of Ukraine and free it. And that is why the Kremlin does not contemplate a meeting at the highest level until the negotiators who are currently discussing from Turkey have the agreement practically closed. That is to say, Putin will not meet with Zelensky to unblock the negotiations, but to conclude them.

“We are not (talking about) a series of ideas, but about a specific written document. Then that meeting will come,” he stressed on the “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” program on the state television channel Rossiya 1. “I hope that, as a result, Due to the vigorous effort being made in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, we will be able to sign a document and that will be an important step towards normalizing the situation,” he added.

Also the Russian chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, today lowered expectations of a prompt agreement, after his Ukrainian counterpart David Arkhamia affirmed the day before that the negotiations are sufficiently advanced for a face-to-face meeting to be held soon between the leaders of both countries. “Regarding the preparations for the drafting of the agreement for a summit, unfortunately I do not share Arakhamia’s optimism. We still have a lot of work ahead of us,” he said on his Telegram account. Medinski also announced that both delegations will continue working this Monday by videoconference