United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately next week to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire between the two countries in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
A spokesperson for Guterres confirmed the meeting on Friday, stating that Guterres will be received by President Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, April 26, after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
UN Associate Spokesperson Eri Kaneko said that Guterres “hopes to talk about what can be done to bring peace to Ukraine urgently.
On April 29, Guterres will then meet with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv, before being received by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Turkish President Not Optimistic
Several world leaders have already attempted to facilitate a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
In March, Dmytro Kuleva asked Turkey to act as a guarantor of any future deal with Russia, along with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. A request to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was soon denied by Russia, with President Ergodan’s chief advisor Ibrahim Kalin stating that Putin did not believe that the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia had advanced sufficiently to agree to a deal.
“Zelenskyy is ready to meet, but Putin thinks that the positions to have this meeting at the leaders’ level are not close enough yet,” Kalin said.
Erdogan has since met with the Russian President, and on Friday said that he was planning to hold phone calls with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia to once again request a meeting between the two leaders.
“We are not without hope,” Erdogan told reporters this week. “Our friends will get in touch with them today, we plan to hold a call again with Putin and Zelenskyy today or tomorrow.”
Russia Plays Down Possibility of Meeting with Zelenskyy
Russian President Vladimir Putin also accused Ukrainian negotiators on Friday of being “inconsistent” in their talks with Moscow. Speaking to European Council President Charles Michel, Putin reportedly said that Kiev had indicated it was not willing to seek mutually acceptable solutions to address Russia’s concerns.
Putin also said that any meeting with President Zelenskyy would be entirely dependent on progress in continuing discussions between the two sides. The last round of discussions took place in person in Turkey on March 29, but negotiations have since broken down after Moscow launched a renewed offensive in the eastern region of Donbas.
Russia accuses Kiev of ignoring a recent written proposal from Moscow, but Ukrainian President Zelenskyy denied any knowledge of the proposals.
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
