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LAST UPDATE | 22 Aug 2025
RUSSIA HAS RULED out an immediate meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as US mediation efforts appeared to stumble.
Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said “no meeting” between Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy was planned, as NATO chief Mark Rutte visited Kyiv to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump raised expectations for a swift summit between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents by saying they had both agreed to meet after Zelenskyy, Rutte and several European leaders visited the White House on Monday.
But today, Lavrov dashed hopes for direct Putin-Zelenskyy talks to resolve the conflict by questioning the Ukrainian president’s legitimacy and repeating the Kremlin’s maximalist claims.
“There is no meeting planned,” Lavrov said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker”.
He told the US broadcaster that Putin was “ready to meet Zelenskyy” as soon as an agenda for the meeting was prepared, adding that the agenda was “not ready at all”.
Trump today compared trying to get Zelenskyy and Putin to “oil and vinegar”.
“They don’t get along too well, for obvious reasons,” he told reporters in Washington, adding “we’ll see” when asked if he would need to attend any such meeting.
He also said he was “not happy” with Russia’s latest attacks in Ukraine and again threatened Moscow with major economic retaliation.
“I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war,” Trump said when asked about an attack that hit a US-owned factory in Ukraine.
Speaking alongside Rutte in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had “no agreements with the Russians”, saying Ukraine had agreed only with Trump on how the diplomatic direction could proceed.
On Thursday, he accused Russia of “trying to wriggle out of holding a meeting”, adding that Moscow wanted to continue the offensive.
The question of eventual security guarantees for Ukraine has been front and centre during the latest US-led diplomatic push to broker a peace deal to end the conflict.
Trump earlier said Russia had agreed to some Western security guarantees for Kyiv.
But Moscow later cast doubt on any such arrangement, by saying discussing them without Russia was “a utopia, a road to nowhere”.
“When Russia raises the issue of security guarantees, I honestly do not yet know who is threatening them,” said Zelenskyy, who wants foreign troops in Ukraine to deter Russian attacks in the future.
The Kremlin has long said it would never accept that, citing Ukraine’s NATO ambition as one of the pretexts for its assault.
“There are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership, including the discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything,” Lavrov told NBC.
On a visit to Kyiv, during which an air raid alert sounded across the city, Rutte said security guarantees were needed to ensure “Russia will uphold any deal and will never ever again attempt to take one square kilometre of Ukraine”.
Moscow signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, which was aimed at ensuring security for Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in exchange for them giving up numerous nuclear weapons left from the Soviet era.
Russia violated that first by taking Crimea in 2014, and then by starting a full-scale offensive in 2022, which has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions to flee their homes.
With reporting from © AFP 2025
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