BERLIN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would be willing to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Miami for talks on ending the war, in a media interview released on Saturday.
But the Kremlin said it had not yet made a decision on whether Putin would attend the gathering of world leaders on December 14-15, and repeated the Russian leader's demand that Zelensky come to Russia for talks.
Putin has repeatedly rejected offers for a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky aimed at brokering an end to more than four years of war.
But the latest offer comes as Washington seeks to kick-start long-stalled talks on Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II, with US negotiators visiting Kyiv and Moscow and President Donald Trump and Putin this week holding talks over the phone.
The United States holds this year's presidency of the Group of 20 major economies, which comprises 19 countries plus the European Union and the African Union, and Russian's finance minister has already attended one G20 meeting.
Asked whether he would be willing to meet Putin at the December summit if both leaders were invited, Zelensky told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle: "Yes, of course.
"We have to come. We have to meet, to speak, and make decisions. It's not about words. What I will tell him or what he wants to tell me, it doesn't matter."
All that mattered were "results", he added.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited by Russia's TASS news agency as saying that "we do not know yet whether we will be going to Miami".
Peskov repeated Putin's demand that Zelensky come to Russia -- which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, triggering the war — for any talks: "If he really wants to meet Putin, then Putin has said before that he can fly to Moscow."
In June Zelensky said he had proposed meeting Putin in the United States during a call with Trump, and was waiting to see what came of it.
The Ukrainian leader previously said that Putin ignored an invitation to meet him at a G7 summit in France the same month.
Last weekend, US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and Kyiv.
In the Deutsche Welle interview, which took place on Friday in Canada, Zelensky said that Witkoff and Kushner's visit was a "good signal", and it was important the pair had made a trip to Kyiv as well as Moscow.
Zelensky has also announced he plans to meet Trump in late September, as Washington pushes for fresh face-to-face talks between Moscow and Kyiv. — AFP
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