Russia’s top diplomat said Friday that no meeting is planned between President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, casting new doubt on President Donald Trump’s push for a summit to end the war.
“Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this agenda is not ready at all,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in an exclusive interview.
The White House has been working to secure a summit location and date following Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska and subsequent talks with Zelenskyy and European leaders in Washington. But Russia has signaled that it is in no rush for a Putin-Zelenskyy one-on-one, and on Thursday launched one of its biggest aerial attacks of the war hitting targets across Ukraine including an American electronics business.
“President Putin said clearly that he is ready to meet provided this meeting is really going to have an agenda, presidential agenda,” Lavrov said. He suggested that Ukraine was the one hindering progress toward a peace deal.
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“President Trump suggested, after Anchorage, several points which we share and on some of them, we agreed to be…to show some flexibility,” he said, referring to the Aug. 15 meeting with Putin in Alaska.
“When President Trump brought … those issues to the meeting in Washington,” Lavrov continued, “it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything.”
Lavrov added: “He even said no to, as I said, to canceling legislation prohibiting the Russian language. How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”
Ukraine has not outlawed Russian, but Putin has long claimed, without evidence, that Kyiv has committed genocide against Russian speakers in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. He has also sought to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Zelenskyy, who was democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2019.
Zelenskyy said Thursday that Russia was trying to “wriggle out” of holding a meeting, accusing it of continuing “massive attacks” on Ukraine.
He has stressed that he is “ready” for a meeting with Putin, and urged a “strong reaction from the United States,” including tougher sanctions and new economic pressure, if Putin refuses.
On Friday, Putin praised Trump and said that it might be possible for the U.S. and Russia to fully restore relations.
“As for our relations with the United States, they are at an extremely low point after the Second World War. I have spoken about this many times. But with President Trump, I believe that a light at the end of the tunnel has nonetheless appeared,” he said. “We just had a very good, substantive, and frank meeting in Alaska. Contacts are continuing at the level of our ministries, agencies, and companies. I very much hope that the first steps that have been taken are only the beginning of a full-scale restoration of our relations.”
He added, “It is precisely up to the leadership of the United States to decide what comes next. I am confident that the leadership qualities of the current president, Trump, are a good guarantee that relations will be restored.”
Putin’s comments came after Russia launched its largest assault since early July, firing nearly 600 drones and 40 ballistic and cruise missiles overnight Thursday, including at a U.S.-owned Flex electronics factory in western Ukraine where at least 15 workers were injured.
Trump appeared to encourage Ukraine to fight back on Truth Social, expressing sympathy that Kyiv lacked equivalent weapons and likening it to a sports team with “a fantastic defense, but is not allowed to play offense.”
“There is no chance of winning!” he wrote.
Zelenskyy said Trump was “absolutely right” that Ukrainians must be protected beyond defense, though he emphasized Kyiv’s diplomatic push.
Talks on postwar security guarantees for Ukraine advanced this week, with defense chiefs from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Finland and Ukraine meeting to hash out protections that Kyiv’s allies could offer in a deal. Military options developed there will now be presented to national security advisers for consideration in ongoing negotiations, the U.S. military said.
Trump has said the U.S. would help provide security guarantees in any settlement with Russia, clarifying that they would not include American ground forces but could involve air support.
Lavrov said earlier this week that Moscow was in favor of “truly reliable” security guarantees for Ukraine but that any attempt to resolve the issue without Russian involvement was “a utopia, a road to nowhere.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — a major escalation to a conflict that had been running since 2014 when it illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
