Trump reportedly pressed Zelenskyy again to meet Putin in Moscow, Ukrainian leader refused
Bloomberg reports that US President Donald Trump once more urged Volodymyr Zelenskyy to travel to Moscow for talks with Vladimir Putin, but Zelenskyy turned down the proposal and reacted with irritation.
According to Bloomberg, as cited by European Pravda, US President Donald Trump again pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during their meeting in New York on 22 September to travel to Moscow for talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin aimed at ending the war. Zelenskyy rejected the idea.
Sources familiar with the Ukrainian president's thinking said Trump's repeated push on the matter irritated him. When Russian journalists asked Zelenskyy when he intended to visit Moscow, he replied "On a missile," then added a swear word. The White House did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.
Talks in New York
This week Zelenskyy and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held separate meetings in New York with representatives of the Trump administration. Washington pushed both sides to agree to a truce on strikes against each other's energy infrastructure, amid a sharp global rise in diesel prices.
Possible future talks
On 25 September, Zelenskyy said technical peace talks involving the US, Ukraine and Russia would likely take place in the United Arab Emirates, though the US has not yet proposed a date. He had earlier suggested the G20 summit in Miami could serve as a venue for a trilateral meeting between Ukraine, the US and Russia. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped Putin would attend the G20 leaders' summit in Miami this December. It recently emerged that Putin had rejected a Zelenskyy proposal to hold war-ending talks on the sidelines of that summit.
