Official Kyiv reacted to the proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin to US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to hold a meeting on Ukraine without the participation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Such a summit will not help end the war, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha stated on Monday, writes DW.
"A trilateral meeting of the leaders of Ukraine, the USA, and Russia could help end the war faster. A trilateral meeting of the leaders of Russia, China, and the USA would only give the opposite result: it would push Putin to continue this war," Sybiha's statement, published on Telegram, reads. "Inviting Putin to such a meeting would only fuel his megalomania and give him weight he does not deserve."
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated that Putin is "not a world leader, but a war criminal. And Russia is not a world power, but a world problem." Russia's economy is at least 13 times smaller than the American one and eight times smaller than the Chinese one, and it continues to shrink, Sybiha noted.
At the same time, according to his data, Russia has lost 1.6 million people killed and wounded in the war against Ukraine.
"By any pragmatic or moral criteria, Putin has no place at the same table with Presidents Trump and Xi," concluded the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
According to Sybiha, the Russian president could earn such a place only with a serious step towards peace — for example, a preliminary ceasefire. "Instead, we see the opposite: an increase in terror against civilians," the Ukrainian minister noted.
Meanwhile, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov stated that a final settlement in Ukraine is impossible without "the participation of someone from Kyiv who is ready to take responsibility." This was his answer to the question of whether Moscow considers a peaceful settlement without the participation of representatives of the Ukrainian leadership to be possible in negotiations.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Putin proposed holding a trilateral summit with Trump and Xi at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in China to agree on ending the war in Ukraine on Moscow's terms.
