Zelenskyy says he is willing to hold negotiations with Putin

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is willing to enter into direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin under certain conditions.

In addition to Ukraine and Russia, the United States and Europe should also be involved in the talks, Zelenskyy told British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview published on YouTube late on Tuesday.

It was unclear whether Zelenskyy was referring to the European Union or to individual member states.

“If this is the only way to bring peace to the people of Ukraine and to avoid further loss of life, we will definitely go to this meeting with these four participants,” he said.

“I will not be nice to him, I consider him an enemy, and frankly, I think he considers me an enemy too,” Zelenskyy added.

Putin has recently emphasized that he is willing to negotiate, but has maintained that Zelenskyy has blocked any talks with him. Putin is referring to a decree signed by Zelenskyy in September 2022, after Russia annexed the four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson.

While the decree does not prohibit negotiations with the Russian leader, it states that they are impossible in view of the situation. Zelenskyy recently said the document was intended to prevent potential separatism because Moscow was looking for unofficial communication channels with Ukraine at that time.

Morgan is close to U.S. President Donald Trump, who is pushing for an end to the war in Ukraine that has been ongoing for almost three years.

In his evening video address on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine had already begun holding “substantive discussions” with the U.S.

The head of his presidential office Andriy Yermak has spoken with U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Zelenskyy said, adding that a schedule for meetings is being prepared.

In his conversation with Morgan, Zelenskyy raised the issue of security guarantees, asking “What support package, what missiles [will we get]? Or will we get nuclear missiles? Then we should be given nuclear missiles.”

Ukraine surrendered the last Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory in 1994 in return for vague security assurances from Moscow, London and Washington. Zelenskyy recently described this as a mistake.