UK, France and Germany back Zelensky’s call for meeting with Putin

With the war grinding into a fifth year, Volodymyr Zelensky won fresh backing in London from the leaders of Britain, France and Germany for his push to open direct ceasefire talks with Russia, according to a joint statement released after defence discussions.

Mr Zelensky joined British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at 10 Downing Street, where the four met as the conflict continued to exact a heavy toll across Ukraine.

The leaders said they “supported the proposal for a direct dialogue between Ukraine and Russia – with active US and European participation – to bring about a ceasefire and support further negotiations”, in a joint statement issued with Mr Zelensky.

“The current line of contact should be the starting point for negotiations,” it said.

Mr Zelensky had earlier proposed a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an open letter on Thursday.

The Ukrainian leader again pressed his case for a direct meeting with Vladimir Putin

Mr Putin rejected the idea, saying he saw “no point” in meeting Mr Zelensky before any potential peace agreement had been settled.

Speaking to Sky News, the Ukrainian president said he had also met Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in Kyiv in order to send a message to Mr Putin.

“You are fighting against us on our territory,” Mr Zelensky said of the message delivered through Mr Abramovich, who is sanctioned by the UK and European Union over his Kremlin ties following Russia’s invasion.

“We will not leave and we will not go out from our territory, no we will not give you victory,” he said, adding that he had once again called for a face-to-face meeting with Mr Putin.

Ukraine has continued to press Western allies for more ammunition for its air defences as Russian strikes hit the country day after day.

Mr Zelensky is also seeking new ways for partners to increase pressure on Moscow to halt the fighting.

Earlier, the Ukrainian president said in a post on X that he would meet Britain’s King Charles III later today.

Nuclear site targeted

Yesterday, Russia launched waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine, and Ukrainian officials said one strike damaged a nuclear storage facility near the site of the Chornobyl disaster.

Radiation levels at the facility stayed within normal limits after the attack, though its fuel reception building was “partially destroyed”, Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator, Energoatom, said.

Drone attacks between Russia and Ukraine have intensified in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled and been overshadowed by the conflict in the Middle East.

The attack left a fuel reception building damaged (Photo credit: Energoatom)

In an earlier online statement, Mr Zelensky said Russia had used an Iranian-designed Shahed drone to “hit one of the buildings of the Centralised Spent Fuel Storage Facility” in the Chornobyl exclusion zone.

“As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia’s brazenness, which long ago went off the charts,” he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was sending a team to examine the damage, describing the incident as “deeply concerning”.

The facility stands in a remote forested area about a dozen kilometres (seven miles) from the site of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster and is intended to store spent fuel from Ukraine’s three operating nuclear plants.

Deadly strikes

Both Moscow and Kyiv accused the other of carrying out fresh attacks on civilians.

In Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, a Russian bombardment on a public transport stop killed at least two people, while a nearby drone strike left a 56-year-old minibus driver dead, authorities said.

Elsewhere, separate Russian attacks in the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed two men, Governor Oleksandr Ganzha said in a Telegram post.

In Russia, local authorities said a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the border region of Belgorod killed a woman and injured her husband.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions driven from their homes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia now controls roughly a fifth of Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk – collectively known as the Donbas — and large swathes of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

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