‘The best place to meet is the hero city Moscow’ Putin refuses to meet Zelensky in a third country. Here’s how hopes for a summit rose, then fizzled.
On August 6, just days before yet another of Donald Trump’s deadlines for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine was set to expire, the U.S. president told European leaders that he planned to meet with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky together in the near future. Over the next month, Trump met with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders separately, claiming afterward that “arrangements” were underway for a Putin–Zelensky summit. Since then, however, the picture has grown murkier: officials have issued directly conflicting statements, and the Kremlin’s comments suggest Moscow never seriously intended to negotiate such a meeting. Meduza has compiled a timeline of how we got here.
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Trump tells European leaders he plans to meet with Putin the following week, and then hold a trilateral meeting between himself, Zelensky, and Putin, the New York Times reports.
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A European official tells CNN that Trump emerged from his Alaska meeting with Putin appearing to believe that the Russian president was “amenable to the idea of a trilateral summit.”
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A day after Zelensky and European leaders meet with Trump in Washington, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says that Putin told Trump during their phone call that he agreed to a bilateral meeting with Zelensky within two weeks.
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Trump says in a Truth Social post that he “began the arrangements” for a Putin–Zelensky meeting.
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Zelensky reiterates that he’s ready for a bilateral meeting with Putin, naming Austria, Switzerland, and Turkey as potential venues.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says Putin is prepared to meet with Zelensky once the meeting’s agenda is set — and that the agenda is “not ready at all.”
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Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov contradicts Trump’s claim that preparations for a Putin–Zelensky meeting were underway, saying “there was no agreement between Putin and Trump on this.”
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At the press conference concluding his visit to China, Putin says he “has not ruled out” direct talks with the Ukrainian president and invites him to Moscow: “If Zelensky is willing, let him come to Moscow, and such a meeting will take place.”
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Zelensky rejects Putin’s invitation to Moscow, saying the proposed location indicates the Russian president doesn’t actually want to meet. “As I see it, if your aim is to prevent a meeting, then inviting me to Moscow is the way to go,” he says at a Paris press conference following a meeting of Ukraine’s European partners.
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Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin claims he’s fully ready to meet with Zelensky but calls Kyiv’s desire for the meeting to take place in a third country an “excessive demand.” “I’ll repeat once again: if someone truly wants to meet with us, we’re ready. The best place for that is the capital of Russia, the hero city of Moscow,” he says.
Cover photo: Vladimir Smirnov / TASS / ZUMA Press / Scanpix / LETA