Zelenskyy rejects Putin’s invitation: “You can come to Kyiv”

On Friday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rejected on Friday the suggestion of Russian President Vladimir Putin that he arrived in Moscow to negotiate a diplomatic agreement, addressing the first proposed proposal in an interview with the ABC News Martha Raddatz global correspondent for “this week.”

“You can come to Kyiv,” Zelenskyy said. “I can’t go to Moscow when my country is under missiles, under attack, every day. I can’t go to the capital of this terrorist.”

Putin “understands this,” he told Raddatz.

Zelenskyy and Raddatz toured and sat at the site of an American property manufacturing plant in western Ukraine that was the recent goal of a Russian missile attack.

Zelenskyy repeatedly said that Putin does not seek a meeting with him while he continues to process the war in Ukraine.

The Russian president said Wednesday “he has never been against meeting with Zelenskyy.”

“If Zelenskyy is ready, then let him come to Moscow,” Putin said. “This meeting will take place.”

See more Zelenskyy’s interview on Sunday morning in “This week.”

President Donald Trump has held a meeting between the two leaders a priority in their efforts to negotiate a peace agreement.

“Ultimately, I will put both of them in a room,” he told Fox News in August.

Trump held a trilateral meeting between the leaders of the United States, Russia and Ukraine, the goal of its summit in Alaska last month with Putin, and then said that a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would occur after the Ukrainian leader arrived at the White House.

“A Tri happened,” the president held last week in a Interview with The Daily Caller. “A BI, I don’t know,” he said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week that he was “clear” that a bilateral between Putin and Zelenskyy would not take place.

In Friday’s interview with the co-presenter of “This Week” Raddatz, Zelenskyy said that Putin’s offer was intended to “postpone the meeting”, insisting that he, Zelenskyy, was “ready for the meeting” in “any type of format.”

Putin is “playing with the United States,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz.

The Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Andrii Sybiha, in X, told seven countries this week: Austria, the Holy See, Switzerland, Türkiye and three states of the Gulf, which according to him were ready to organize peace conversations to which Zelenskyy would assist.

“If a person does not want to meet during the war, of course, he can propose something that cannot be acceptable for me or others,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz.

Julia Cherner of ABC News contributed to this report.