Putin rebuffs Zelensky’s call for face-to-face talks, saying there is ‘no point’

By Victoria Butenko, Katharina Krebs, Nina Subkhanberdina, Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova, CNN

(CNN) — Russian leader Vladimir Putin rebuffed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for a face-to-face meeting, saying there was “no point.”

Zelensky urged Putin to end the countries’ four-year war in an open letter posted Thursday, as the Russian leader was preparing to address the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

But Putin responded with dismissiveness, calling the letter “rude” and voicing skepticism about Zelensky’s true intentions. The Ukrainian president can “come to Moscow” if he wants to talk, a Kremlin spokesperson said.

Zelensky’s timing – in the middle of the event where Russian billionaires schmooze with political leaders and decision makers – is no coincidence. The Russian economy is struggling and Zelensky is hoping he can capitalize on rising disquiet among business elites.

“We can all see that Russians are finally becoming less comfortable with this reality – with the fact that the war is bringing more and more negative consequences to Russia,” Zelensky wrote in the open letter. “They do not like the fact that there is no end in sight to your war.”

The Ukrainian leader said Putin “regularly” postpones deadlines to capture Ukrainian regions, specifically Donetsk.

“And you will not capture it this year either,” he said.

Zelensky struck a personal note in the letter, addressing Putin directly and warning him about his future: “(You) will have to fight much harder for your own existence – not Russia’s, but your own. And this is not a threat from me or from Ukraine. It is a fact of Russian history that you know well: when Russia grows tired, change comes.”

“We can work toward that fatigue. You can stop your war,” he added.

Ukraine is nowhere near winning the war, but it does appear to have the upper hand in some areas along the front lines. Kyiv has also greatly increased its ability to strike deep inside Russia, targeting energy facilities and other strategic targets far from the borders.

To hammer home that message, Ukraine struck St. Petersburg just as attendees of the prestigious forum – sometimes dubbed “Russia’s Davos” – were gathering there this week.

Western experts have long pointed out that the way Russia is waging the war is unsustainable – both in terms of the economy and human capital. The International Institute for Strategic Studies has recently noted that the Kremlin will “soon face a fundamental choice over whether to radically escalate its demands on Russia’s economy and society or to scale back its war aims.”

But voices warning about the state of the economy have recently begun to emerge even inside Russia. German ⁠Gref, the boss of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, said on Friday that continued economic growth in the ​current circumstances is “already a miracle.”

Still, the Kremlin has so far dismissed the warnings and Putin himself struck a defiant tone during his speech at the forum on Friday. He referred to sanctions imposed on Moscow after he ordered an unprovoked full-scale invasion on Ukraine as “theft” and accused the West of inventing reasons to “fault” Russia.

Putin continues to push his maximalist demands to end the war, including Ukraine giving up even some of the territory that remains under its control. Meanwhile, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday that the country’s economy was “in a state of controlled cooling.”

‘Direct engagement’

Zelensky called for a direct meeting with Putin to end the war and stressed that peace shouldn’t wait until the US turned its attention from Iran to the Ukraine-Russia war.

“We see that the United States is fully focused on the issue of Iran, and it would be wrong to simply wait until the war in Europe returns to the center of its attention,” Zelensky said.

“Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us – and you. I am proposing a meeting,” he wrote, adding that it should take place in a third country and that a clear date should be set. During those meetings, Zelensky said, a full ceasefire needs to be in place.

“An attempt to establish real silence is the best way to begin talking to one another.”

Zelensky reiterated in the letter that him traveling to the Russian capital is a non-starter – unsurprisingly, given the number of Russian-sponsored assassination attempts that Ukrainian security services say they’ve foiled in the past.

Putin did not mention the letter in his speech, but he was asked about it in the following panel discussion.

Putin said he never refused to meet Zelensky, but, in response to a question from India Today’s Geeta Mohan, he said he saw “no point” in doing that now. “The only point is for the Ukrainian side to stop the advance of our armed forces, that’s it,” he said. “But we need agreements … let the experts do the work, work out some solutions, and after that, we can meet up … sign some documents.”

He called the letter “rude” and said the real intention behind Zelensky’s note is to ensure no meeting takes place.

Putin said his response to the letter would be a message to Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines: “Keep working, brothers.”

Zelensky later decried Putin’s “weak response” to the letter.

“He simply does not want to end the war. I think this response has disappointed many around the world,” Zelensky said.

During the event, Putin allowed several carefully curated audience members to speak.

Rodney Mims Cook, Jr., the US official leading the commission tasked with approving the rebuild of the White House ballroom wing, admired the architecture of St. Petersburg and thanked Putin for the hospitality.

“I appreciate the offer to speak, and we have a lot of ideas to talk about between our two capital cities in the next week,” Cook said.

Putin expressed gratitude to him for the “kind words.”

European Parliament member and Romanian politician Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă declared to Putin that “Romanian people don’t hate you. Romanian people want peace with Russia.”

Former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl also spoke, asking Putin a question about the rules of engagement around drone warfare. Putin famously attended Kneissl’s wedding in 2018, stopping in for a quick dance with the bride.

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Putin said proposals made by US President Donald Trump to end the war could “be the basis” for peace agreements but would require compromise from both countries.

“We generally agreed to these compromises. We just need to convince the Ukrainian side of this, and that’s it,” he said. “But overall, I believe they could very well be the basis for agreements between Russia and Ukraine and could put an end to this conflict.”

Trump vowed to quickly end the war when he took office in January 2025, but he’s made no tangible progress and has been criticized for seemingly siding with Russia on more than one occasion.

Putin paid something of a tribute to Trump, calling him a “colleague” and repeating the claim that the US president lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of “fraud.” He also said that, had it been Trump who was in power during the run-up to the full-scale invasion in 2022, “it would have turned out differently.”

But the US president suffered a defeat on the issue on Thursday after more than a dozen Republican lawmakers defied their own leadership – Trump himself – by voting with Democrats to approve a major bill to deliver billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine while imposing steep sanctions on Russia.

If passed by the Senate, the bill would be Congress’s first big move on the Ukraine-Russia war since spring 2024, when Biden was still in office. Still, Trump could veto the bill if it were to reach his desk.

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