Фото: Sky News
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with Sky News journalist Yalda Hakim, confirmed that he met Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in Kyiv and passed a message to Vladimir Putin through him.
We are publishing this part of the interview in full:
Sky News Journalist: You’ll reach out to the likes of Roman Abramovich and others to try and help you in that path?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Abramovich, so he came to Kyiv, he said that I think that he said: “I have a message direct to you and I want to get a message and take a message from you and to give it to Putin.” But he said that it has to be silently without any kind of public messages. I said, “Look, it’s your choice. Okay, for us, it doesn’t matter, public or un-public, but it’s always with Russia in such way. If they say something has to be between us, it’s mean that tomorrow, not only we will know about it, but it is not the secret.”
He came and he wanted to give him the message that they are ready to, that they want to understand what we are ready to do. I said, “The question is not about us. You are fighting against us on our territory.” And I said to him about Donbas. It was the key message. And I said, “No, we will not leave our territory, no, will not give you a victory such way. And you will not get it.”
And then we spoke about any kind of compromises. I said of all the compromises, after ceasefire, ceasefire is the biggest compromise from our side to your side.
Sky News Journalist: So is he a go-between now? Between you and Vladimir Putin? He’s going back and forth?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: I don’t know. When he gets a message from me, when he got a message from me, he said he will go directly to Putin. I said, “Okay. I’m ready to meet. Not in Moscow, not in Belarus and not in Minsk.” It’s understandable why.
And I said, “You can choose any time from tomorrow. You can choose, any day, any format. We can choose with President Trump. I’m sure that he will be ready to come. And we can do it with Europeans. I think that everybody wants to help, or we can choose the way bilateral, just bilateral meeting.”