Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the prospect of peace talks with Vladimir Putin while dismissing his Russian counterpart Thursday as a “nobody.”
Zelensky used an interview with Britain’s Sky News to declare Putin “doesn’t want negotiations because he doesn’t want peace.”
The Ukrainian leader said he was “convinced” Ukraine was “just the first step” for Putin, who has his eye on “other countries” as he seeks Eastern European domination.
Pushed as to whether a face-to-face meeting with Putin would help pause the conflict, Zelensky switched from Ukrainian to English to say: “It is not interesting for me. Not interesting to meet, not interesting to speak.”
Key allies like the U.S. have already broached the possibility of a war with no end in immediate sight.
Zelensky cited his own reluctance to talk by pointing to a meeting he had with Putin under the Normandy Format before Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022: “I saw the man who said one thing and then did another.”
“After [the] full-scale invasion, for me he is nobody, nobody,” he added.
Zelensky’s dismissal of Putin is a continuation of personal barbs between the two sides going back as far as last March when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov labelled the Ukraine leader a “neo-Nazi.”
Watch below as Russia’s Sergey Lavrov personally attacks Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky:
This is not the first time both sides have been subject to speculation about the prospect of talks.
U.N. chief Antonio Guterres sought to cast himself as a peacemaker between Russia and Ukraine last year, issuing a letter calling for a ceasefire and talks to be personally brokered by the veteran Portuguese socialist, as Breitbart News reported.
Both sides showed scant regard for Guterres and roundly ignored him and the globalist organization he represents.