The Trump administration has, coming off the Friday and Monday Ukraine-related important summits, been touting that a direct Putin-Zelensky meeting will happen soon, likely in the coming days or weeks, but the Kremlin is now downplaying and contradicting this.
No, there is no Putin-Zelensky meeting on the immediate horizon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made clear:
The Russian president told Trump on Monday that he was “open” to the idea of direct talks with Ukraine, but the next day Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov watered down that already vague commitment.
Any meeting would have to be prepared “gradually… starting with the expert level and thereafter going through all the required steps”, he said, repeating a frequent noncommittal Kremlin line.
Dmitry Polyanskiy, a Russian deputy representative to the UN, told the BBC “nobody [had] rejected” the opportunity for direct talks, “but it shouldn’t be a meeting for the sake of a meeting”.
But despite the perhaps exaggerated US statements of where things actually stand, President Trump did admit Tuesday that it’s a “tough one” and that “We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks.” He said, “It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal.”
Lavrov in his latest statements further clarified that during Monday’s call with Trump, Putin only agreed to elevate the level of Russian representation in negotiations with Ukraine, and not to directly participate in a summit.
The top Russian diplomat emphasized that a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin would require extensive preparation and should take place only at the conclusion of the negotiation process, serving as its final step.
This has been Moscow’s position all along – and practically speaking there would be no use in Putin showing up to such a meeting only to have Zelensky not budge on crucial conditions like territorial concessions or permanent neutrality regarding NATO.
BBC reviews that even the statements about imminent summits, but which clearly are no closer to coming to fruition, themselves are likely an extreme negotiating tactic. “It was reported that Putin had suggested to Trump that Zelensky could travel to Moscow for talks, something Ukraine was never likely to accept,” BBC says.
“The proposal may have been Russia’s way of putting forward an option so far-fetched Kyiv could not possibly have agreed to it,” the report comments.
Countries like Switzerland have meanwhile begun offering that they could host such talks. Also, there are reports that Hungary or Turkey could also be potential venues. Belarus has also said it is willing to host.
Trump explained additionally on The Mark Levin Show on Tuesday evening, “I had a very successful meeting with President Zelensky and now I thought it would be better if they met without me, just to see – I want to see what goes on. You know, they had a hard relationship very bad, very bad relationship.”
After Trump and Witkoff trumpeted the alleged achievement of Russia agreeing to security guarantees for Ukraine, Lavrov says that Russia only agrees to guarantees in which Russia (and China) have a veto, as per the Russian proposal in Istanbul in 2022. That is, nobody is allowed… pic.twitter.com/RyLzsThn2O
— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) August 20, 2025
“And now we’ll see how they do,” he added. And if necessary – and it probably would be – but if necessary, I’ll go and I’ll probably be able to get it closed. I just want to see what happens at the meeting. So they’re in the process of setting it up, and we’re going to see what happens.”
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