Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday, October 27, that Volodymyr Zelensky may come to Moscow for direct talks, and that Russia will provide him with „all conditions,” including on security. Kyiv has for months rejected Moscow as a meeting venue.
Ushakov’s remarks followed a phone call between Putin and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. According to the Russian adviser, cited among others by the TASS agency, both leaders assured Putin of Zelensky’s „active interest” in direct talks. Ushakov said Putin replied: if Zelensky really wants such talks, he should come to Moscow.
What is known about the call with Støre and Stubb
According to a statement from the Norwegian government, the initiative came from both leaders and was carried out in coordination with Ukraine. Its aim was to convey directly to Putin a position on future negotiations. Støre spoke of the need for actions leading to de-escalation, while Stubb described the conversation as „direct and substantive.” Both stressed that they spoke on their own behalf, not on behalf of all of Europe.
The call was a follow-up to a meeting with Zelensky and US envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo a week earlier. Afterwards, Witkoff met Putin in St. Petersburg. As Kyiv Independent reports, the Kremlin later declared readiness to resume trilateral talks (Ukraine, Russia, USA) after November 4. Polsat News reports that the call also concerned a planned meeting of representatives of the three sides in Abu Dhabi in November.
Moscow’s and Kyiv’s positions unchanged
The invitation to Moscow is not new. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in April that Putin was ready to meet in Moscow „at any moment,” but that the meeting should serve to finalize previously agreed arrangements. In January, he also claimed that it was Zelensky who had asked for a meeting, and Moscow had only replied that it was possible in Moscow.
Zelensky has repeatedly rejected this option. In April he said Ukraine was not afraid to meet in any country except Russia and Belarus. According to Polsat News, at the end of September, at the UN General Assembly in New York, he told Russian journalists he could fly to Moscow only „on a rocket.” Kyiv stresses that top-level talks can take place only on neutral ground. As of publication, Zelensky and his office had not responded to Ushakov’s Tuesday remarks.
The two leaders have not met face to face since the start of the full-scale invasion; they last met in 2019 in the Normandy format, as Kyiv Independent recalls. Ukraine also links the question of elections to a long ceasefire, as we wrote in our article on the 60-day ceasefire condition.
What it means
For now there is neither a date nor an agreed format for a leaders’ meeting. Tuesday’s statement is a declaration by the Russian side, not an arrangement with Kyiv. The realistic timetable is set by the technical trilateral contacts planned for November. For Poland, this does not currently mean any direct changes, although every move in the negotiations affects the debate on regional security and support for Ukraine.
