Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Roman Abramovich, the Russian magnate and former owner of Chelsea football club, had met him in Kyiv where he offered to take a message to the Kremlin on peace prospects. Zelenskyy’s comments to Sky News marked his first acknowledgment that the billionaire had travelled to Ukraine’s capital and was involved to some extent in negotiations. “He came to Kyiv. He said ‘I am messaging direct to you. And I want to take a message from you and give it to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’. But he said it has to be silent without any kind of public messages,” Zelenskyy said.
“You are fighting against us on our territory,” Zelenskyy said of his message to Abramovich. “We will not leave and we will not go out from our territory, no we will not give you victory,” he said, adding he had reiterated his request to meet Putin face-to-face. Zelenskyy said the meeting was “not a secret”, adding that the Russians wanted to know what Kyiv was “ready to do”. Abramovich has been sanctioned by the UK government after ministers accused him of having “clear connections” to Putin’s regime.
Abramovich has not commented on the Kyiv meeting. However, he played a role in unsuccessful negotiations to end the fighting in the first weeks of the invasion, but has been less visible since. Putin has made it clear Russia is not prepared to stop fighting in Ukraine until Kyiv abandons the Donbas region, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
