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.
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“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.”
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Zelensky proposed diplomacy to start from the current front line, with Ukraine being ready to fully cease fire for the duration of talks under US monitoring.
The president called for an “all-for-all” prisoner exchange, steps to return civilians and children taken during the war, and a summit hosted by a neutral state such as Switzerland, Turkiye or an Arab country, involving key European actors and the US as potential security guarantors.
“Whatever you say about NATO, geopolitics, or the Russian language, this war is your personal choice – a war without a real cause. That is how history will remember it,” Zelensky said. “This time could have unfolded entirely differently.”
The letter ends with a warning that if the war continues, Putin will have to fight “for [his] personal existence,” Zelensky said, invoking Russian history where prolonged fatigue leads to undeniable change.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that the Kremlin has seen Zelensky’s letter and that it would respond at a later time.
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