[UPDATED: June 4, 10:32 pm
, Kyiv time. Kremlin response added.]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in a rare open letter to the Russian leader Thursday, saying he was also ready for a “full ceasefire.” The letter was released by the Office of the President of Ukraine, amid recent Ukrainian long-range drone strikes near the opening of a major Russian economic forum in St. Petersburg.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. “Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us – and you. I am proposing a meeting,” Zelensky said in the letter, adding that “Ukraine is ready for a full ceasefire for the duration of the negotiations.” Framing the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as Putin’s “personal choice – a war without a real cause,” Zelensky said that these 26 years of the Kremlin rule have turned bilateral relations from trade and civilian issues to “strikes and losses,” citing Russia’s recent losses of over 30,000 troops, with a reported killed-to-wounded ratio of 63 to 37%. He says Moscow lacks the financial and political resources to keep buying domestic loyalty indefinitely. The letter portrays growing Russian public fatigue with missile and drone attacks, rising prices, fuel shortages, and the prospect of a second wave of mobilization, insisting that “the world is not tired of Ukraine” – it is “tired of Russia.”
