Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a proposal by his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to meet for face-to-face talks to end the war as senseless, calling for the country's military to "do the job.""I see no point in meeting. It only makes sense for the Ukrainian side," Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, adding that a potential cease-fire would only help Kyiv to stop Russian ground offensives.Putin's comments come a day after Zelenskyy published an open letter urging the Russian president to stop the war, now well into its fifth year, and indicating that Kyiv has no intention of giving up the lasting fight.
"Ukraine is ready for a full cease-fire for the duration of the negotiations," Zelenskyy wrote on June 4, suggesting the situation along the stalled front line would not change in Russia's favor in the foreseeable future.Zelenskyy's call to relaunch the peace process follows diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump that appear to have stalled in recent months, particularly since the outbreak of war in the Middle East.Washington has for months sought to balance the positions of Kyiv and Moscow to end the war, but the two sides remained far apart, with Kremlin sticking to its hard-line stance and offering no compromise on control of Ukraine's key eastern region of Donetsk.While diplomacy has appeared to lose momentum and has been limited to exchanges of prisoners of war, the fighting on the front line and mutual military strikes have shown no signs of easing.
