Slovakia’s Fico meets Ukraine’s Zelenskiy and delivers a message from Putin, opening indirect talks between the two presidents

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Uzhgorod to talk about energy and the peace process. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Belrin September 5, 2025

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Uzhgorod, close to the Slovak-Ukrainian border, on September 5 and delivered a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin in what could be an  indirect approach  to start talks between the two presidents. 

Zelenskiy said they discussed the path to a peaceful settlement of the war in Ukraine and post-war security guarantees, as well as Europe’s energy independence. "Russian oil, just as Russian gas, has no future," Zelenskiy said, referring to Ukraine’s recent bombing of Russian pipelines delivering oil and gas to Central Europe.

Zelenskiy described the conversation with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico as “substantive.”

“Thank you for the meeting. It is important that we have this dialogue, and we will continue it,” Zelenskiy said.

The meeting, which took place in the western Ukrainian city, are the first confirmed attempts by Putin to communicate directly with Zelenskiy at a time when US President Donald Trump has been trying to bring Putin and Zelenskiy together for direct talks to halt the conflict in Ukraine.

“Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy today in Uzhgorod, near the Slovak-Ukrainian border,” a joint statement released after the talks said giving no more details.

Fico has just returned from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin in China where he had a one-on-one meeting as the only member of the EU to travel to attend the event.

Fico is along with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban one of the few EU leaders sympathetic to Russia and has constantly called for an end to the hostilities through dialogue. Trump’s efforts to organise a face-to-face meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin seem to have stalled. Putin on September 4 said he is still open to a meeting and invited Zelenskiy to come to Moscow, but Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) rejected that offer out of hand.

In China, Fico told Putin that he wants normalised relations with Russia. Slovakia remains heavily dependent on Russian energy imports.

“Let’s go back to what used to be typical for countries when it comes to economic cooperation,” Fico told Putin, “for the safe and regular gas supplies that we receive through TurkStream,” alluding to the recent halts in oil imports via the Russian Druzhba oil pipeline for which Fico’s left-right government blamed Ukraine.

The approach by Putin via Fico comes as a coalition of the willing Paris summit on September 4 ended in failure after the top EU leaders called Trump at the end of the discussion to seek the White House’s support for their plan to send a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine if hostilities cease. Trump turned the tables on the COW leaders and berated them for continuing to import Russian oil and “funding the war.”

No details of the message delivered by Fico have leaked, but Putin has repeatedly said he wants a deal that deals with the “root causes” of the conflict and reflects the “realities on the ground. Analysts take that to mean Russia is seeking a wider reset of security arrangements in Europe that include not only security guarantees for Ukraine but for Russia as well. It also probably means that Putin wants western recognition of Russian sovereignty over the five occupied Ukrainian regions, a no-Nato guarantee from Ukraine and significant sanctions relief.

Energy row

Part of the discussions covered Slovakia's energy dependence on Russia that is causing friction with the EU that wants to wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies completely

“America wants to seriously cut Russia’s income from energy exports — and that is the right path,” Zelenskiy said in a video address to an economic forum in Italy just before meeting Fico. “We will also discuss this issue with Fico.”

Following Fico’s meeting with Putin earlier in the week, he said his government is "extremely interested" in developing relations with Moscow and continuing to buy Russian oil and gas.

The two leaders also discussed the current efforts by the coalition of the willing to thrash out security guarantees for Ukraine and Zelenskiy claimed Slovakia "will not stand aside" while other European countries pledged post-war support. It is unclear what role Fico's government might play in those arrangements.

Zelenskiy also said that Slovakia supports Ukraine in its stalled EU accession bid in contrast to Hungary, which is actively blocking the process. Zelenskiy also said they talked about directions for bilateral cooperation in the economy, energy, and infrastructure. According to him, Slovakia will “not stay on the sidelines” and will “actively participate in the joint progress.”

“Slovakia supports Ukraine in its move toward the European Union. This is very significant. We also see that Ukraine and Moldova must continue moving together toward EU membership. It is also important that bilateral cooperation in economic, energy, and infrastructure matters here in our region strengthens our peoples, our countries,” Zelenskiy said in a statement.

 

Corruption scandal means Zelenskiy would likely lose a presidential election

Corruption scandal means Zelenskiy would likely lose a presidential election / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin December 26, 2025

The expanding Energoatom corruption scandal has hurt Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's popularity and if elections were held this weekend he would lose in the second round, according to a Socis poll.

A majority of Ukrainians believe Zelenskiy should face either criminal prosecution or political sanctions in connection with alleged corruption where his close friend and former business partner Timur Mindich ran a $100mn kickback scheme.

As part of the ongoing peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, both the Trump administration and the Kremlin are insisting that Zelenskiy organise fresh presidential elections as soon as possible after a ceasefire is called. Zelenskiy has said that he is willing to do so and in sign of how far the talks have progressed last week the Rada submitted a bill to organise elections while martial law is still in effect – something that is otherwise banned by Ukraine’s constitution.

In the nationwide survey, 30% of respondents said Zelenskiy should be tried in court for corruption, while an additional 28.4% supported imposing political bans that would prevent him from running in future elections. Taken together, the findings indicate a clear majority in favour of holding the president accountable.

The results reflect growing public dissatisfaction amid the Mindich corruption scandal, which has implicated figures close to the president. Two ministers have already resigned and the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, was forced to quit. According to the poll, 39% of Ukrainians believe Zelenskiy was directly involved in the scandal, while 29.3% believe he at least had knowledge of it.

Zelenskiy’s approval ratings were already under pressure after he tried to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms on July 22 by forcing through Law 21414 on July 22 that would have put the main organs – National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) – under his personal control just as both bodies were zeroing in on corruption investigations in the president's inner circle that led to Mindich fleeing the country.

If presidential elections were held today, Zelenskiy and Ukraine’s former top general Valerii Zaluzhnyi, now the ambassador to the UK, would each receive roughly 30% of the vote in a first-round contest. However, Zelenskiy would be defeated in any likely runoff scenario.

In a hypothetical second round, Zaluzhnyi would defeat Zelenskiy by a wide margin: 64.2% to 35.8%, according to the poll.

Against another prominent military figure, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Zelenskiy would also lose, by 56.2% to 43.8%.

Budanov has overseen many military operations personally and recently launched a successful counter attack in the battle for Pokrovsk, a key logistical hub that supplies the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) defences for the entire frontline in eastern Ukraine. He has seen his popularity rise and is now one of the two top contenders to take over from Zelenskiy as president.

The Socis poll highlights the sharp political risks facing the president as the country navigates prolonged wartime governance, Western expectations for reform, and intensifying internal political rivalry.

 

Zelenskiy's U.S. Visit Sparks Political Firestorm

By RFE/RL staff - Sep 30, 2024

• Zelenskiy's visit to a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, sparked controversy among Republicans, who viewed it as a partisan campaign event.
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• Trump and other Republicans have criticized US aid to Ukraine and suggested that Kyiv should negotiate with Russia.
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• The future of US support for Ukraine remains uncertain, with the outcome of the presidential election potentially having a significant impact on the war's trajectory.
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In 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was dragged into the U.S. presidential election campaign. This time, just weeks before a vote that could have a massive influence on Kyiv's defense against the Russian invasion, he walked right into it.

On September 22, Zelenskiy toured a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that makes ammunition for his armed forces, thanking workers and signing one of the 155 mm shells that are crucial for Kyiv's war effort. He was joined by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and two members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats.

Had Zelenskiy visited the plant during any of his four previous trips to the United States since Russia launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022, it might have been long forgotten by now.

Instead, it has turned into a flashpoint for Republicans, creating controversy that marred his the nearly weeklong visit to the United States, Ukraine's biggest backer, at a time when Russia is making gains on the battlefield, decimating Ukraine's energy infrastructure as winter approaches, and counting on Western support for Kyiv to wither.

Battleground

Scranton is President Joe Biden's hometown. Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state whose voters could end up deciding the November 5 election between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

For Zelenskiy, the factory tour was meant "to demonstrate and show…that the assistance to Ukraine is beneficial to the United States itself, because this assistance makes it possible to create new jobs," Alyona Getmanchuk, director of the Ukrainian think tank New Europe Center and a nonresident senior fellow at the U.S.-based Atlantic Council Eurasia Center, told RFE/RL in Kyiv.

Trump, she said, apparently "perceived this as an attempt to…influence the electoral balance, which is very fragile in the state of Pennsylvania. That is, he saw it exclusively in the context of the election."

As Zelenskiy's U.S. trip continued with speeches at the United Nations and meetings with Biden and Harris at the White House, Republicans lashed out over the factory tour. The speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, called it "a partisan campaign event" and demanded Zelenskiy "immediately fire" his ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.

Charles Kupchan, an analyst at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said the munitions plant visit "backfired."

"It's more an indication of the polarized debate between Democrats and Republicans than it is about any missteps taken by Zelenskiy," he told RFE/RL.

'Much More Difficult'

Mykola Byelyeskov, an analyst at the Ukrainian government-backed National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv, suggested the U.S. election campaign makes navigating ties with Kyiv's most crucial backer particularly tricky.

"Zelenskiy is doing his best" on the U.S. trip, Byelyeskov told RFE/RL. "We see some results. I'm sure that we'll see more results. And we need to deal with every single faction in U.S. politics. And we are trying to do this. And it's much more difficult during the election season."

For Biden, it's also "very difficult to take radical steps that in his mind might bring the issue of escalation closer. Because all the surveys in the U.S., domestic ones, they say that the American population is indeed concerned with hypothetical nuclear escalation," he said. "That's why it makes it more difficult for Ukraine to argue for various things that we need."

During the visit, Zelenskiy did not secure a public promise that the United States would permit Kyiv to strike deeper into Russia with U.S. long-range missiles.

A group of Republicans in the House held up $61 billion in mostly military aid for Ukraine for six months, leading to a deficit of ammunition on the battlefield, in part on the grounds that the money could be better spent at home. The United States spends the majority of the aid money at home on restocking arms and equipment sent to Ukraine, and the trip to Scranton highlighted that fact.

Johnson had been instrumental in eventually getting the package through; his public ire over the plant visit signaled goodwill over that development is gone.

Kurt Volker, a Pennsylvania native who served as a special envoy to Ukraine under Trump in 2017-2019, called the timing of the factory tour "a huge mistake."

"It is a very sensitive time, a sensitive issue, a sensitive state -- like, the key swing state. It is just playing with fire, and Ukraine should do everything possible to avoid being a political subject in our election," said Volker, who is now an analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.

Way Back When

Lucian Kim, senior Ukraine analyst for the Crisis Group, called the visit a "misstep" on Zelenskiy's part that opened him up for criticism from opponents of aid for Ukraine within the Republican Party faction known as MAGA Republicans for their unyielding support for Trump and his policies.

"Bilateral U.S. support has been one of the foundations of Ukrainian foreign policy," Kim said. "That level of bipartisan support now seems to be in question. The MAGA wing, which is unsympathetic to Ukraine, is increasingly defining the Republican party."

The Pennsylvania plant visit was at last one factor raising doubts about an expected meeting between Zelenskiy and Trump -- whose relationship has been colored for years by a phone call in 2019, just months after the Ukrainian leader's election, that led to Trump's impeachment -- would take place.

Trump was impeached by the then-Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in December 2019 over the phone call in which he was accused of pressuring Zelenskiy to dig up dirt on the Biden family's activities in Ukraine. He was acquitted by the Senate, then controlled by the Republicans, in February 2020.

Trump took aim at Zelenskiy several times. At a campaign stop on September 25, he repeated his description of the Ukrainian president as "the greatest salesman in the world" -- a reference to the tens of billions of dollars in aid lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have approved since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.

'Proposals For Surrender'

He also repeated his argument that Kyiv should have reached an agreement with Russia to stave off or end the invasion. "Any deal -- the worst deal -- would've been better than what we have now," he asserted. "If they made a bad deal, it would've been much better. They would've given up a little bit and everybody would be living."

Trump has said he would bring an end to Russia's war against Ukraine quickly if he is elected, several times saying it would happen even before the inauguration in January -- a claim he made again when he and Zelenskiy met in New York on September 27. He has not said how he would accomplish this, but his comments have raised concerns his efforts would involve exhorting Ukraine to hand territory to Russia.

On the main purposes of Zelenskiy's U.S. trip was to present Biden and others with a "victory plan" for the war against the Russian invasion, though details have not been released. Trump, in his debate against Harris on September 10, declined to answer directly when asked whether he wants Ukraine to win, saying, "I want the war to stop."

On September 26, Harris said suggestions that Kyiv should cede territory for the sake of peace are "dangerous and unacceptable." Such calls are "proposals for surrender," she said.

A Meeting In New York

In an interview with The New Yorker ahead of his U.S. visit, Zelenskiy said, "Trump doesn't really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how." He also said JD Vance, Trump's running mate, is "too radical" and has suggested he wants Ukraine "to give up our territories."

The atmosphere seemed warmer when Zelenskiy and Trump held talks at the Trump Tower in New York, with Trump praising Zelenskiy for his conduct during the impeachment process -- "he was a piece of steel" -- but there was no sign of a change in Trump's attitude toward the Russian invasion.

Trump again offered no details on how he would seek an end to the war, saying he believes that "we're going to get it resolved very quickly" if he wins the presidency. "If we have a win, I think long before January 20…we can work out something that's good for both sides this time," Trump said before the two sat down for the meeting.

"It's a shame but this is a war that should have never happened, and we'll get it solved," Trump said after the meeting. "It is a complicated puzzle.... Too many people dead."

In a Telegram post after what he called a “very meaningful meeting,” Zelenskiy said that he had presented his “victory plan” to Trump and that they “discussed used many details.”

"We have a common view that the war in Ukraine must be stopped. Putin cannot win. The Ukrainians must win," he said.

Whether Zelenskiy's visit will affect the outcome of the U.S. election is an open question.

"Foreign policy issues in general don't determine [U.S.] electoral outcomes. People vote on the economy, on immigration, on crime, what's on their radar screen on a day-to-day basis," Kupchan said.

And exactly how a win for Trump or for Harris might change the course of the war is also unclear.

Kupchan said that despite Trump's rhetoric, he will struggle to cut a deal with Putin if elected and likely end up approving aid for Ukraine.

"Trump would not want to be the American president who lost Ukraine. And so even if he gets elected and tries to negotiate an end game, he too is going to end up having to send support to Ukraine," he said.

By RFE/RL

THE NEW GLOBAL ALLIANCE OF TYRANTS

Putin proposes Ukraine peace summit with Trump and Xi that leaves Zelenskiy out

Moscow wants a three-way meeting in China next month as Washington squeezes Kyiv's air defences, intelligence and satellite links to force it to stop hitting Russian refineries. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin October 19, 2026

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed meeting Donald Trump and Xi Jinping next month to settle the war in Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskiy has not been invited, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 18.

Putin floated the idea during his October 9 phone call with Trump, the same call that produced the controversial diesel deal for the US to buy Russian fuel and bring prices down at the pump ahead of next month’s midterm elections, a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter told the paper.

The Kremlin wants the three leaders to meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19. Beijing has signalled it would not object if Trump agrees.

"There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the paper. A senior US official said Trump had not agreed to the summit but could be receptive to it.

The proposal comes amid mounting US pressure on Kyiv over its refinery strikes. Trump has demanded that Zelenskiy halt Ukraine’s bombing of Russia’s refineries and unilaterally announced an “energy ceasefire” on October 11, although it quickly became apparent that neither the Kremlin or Bankova had agreed to it – or even knew of its existence. Zelenskiy held off bombing refineries for three days but then resumed again after Russia ignored the deal. This weekend, Ukraine launched a new massive drone strike against the oil port in St Petersburg in defiance of Trump’s wishes further undermining the already bad relations between Bankova and the White House.

Washington has responded by throttling intelligence sharing and access to the Starlink communications network, and slowed crucial Patriot interceptor deliveries; intelligence sharing has since resumed, Zelenskiy said, although much confusion remains over the state of the service. Trump has also put on hold the Graham Act's hellish sanctions on Russia, all while demanding that Ukraine stop its drone campaign against Russian refineries. With US diesel prices at record highs and the midterm elections on November 3, Trump wants the strikes stopped, and Putin is offering him a format in which Ukraine has no seat at the table.

Zelenskiy accused Trump of pushing Ukraine to capitulate to Russia in an interview with Bloomberg on October 18, escalating a week-long row with the US president.

Trump answered in a post on Truth Social the same day, defending his decision to hold back the sanctions bill and turning on the Ukrainian leader.

Trump's Truth Social post of October 18 on Russia, Ukraine's refinery strikes and Zelenskiy. Source: Donald J. Trump on Truth Social

"Zelenskyy is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States," Trump wrote. "Zelenskyy doesn't care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did.”

In the last week the two presidents have traded increasingly vitriolic barbs. Trump called for Zelenskiy replacement as president after he very publicly criticised the diesel deal as a “betrayal” of Ukraine and followed up by calling Zelenskiy a “dictator” in a TV interview. Zelenskiy has since accused Trump of actively working towards Ukraine’s defeat in the war.

Trump added in this weekend’s post that Russia was "doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran" and that he wanted to keep it that way.

No missiles

Zelenskiy told Bloomberg that the US is now supplying just 12 Patriot interceptors a month, about a quarter of the rate under former president Joe Biden, and that Kyiv has to pay for them. Washington has approved only part of the missiles European allies have already paid for under Nato's Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) scheme. "The American side approved the delivery of only some of them, but not the rest. And this is not a technical issue," he said. It has also been reported that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has ordered Europe not to share what interceptors it has left with Ukraine, potentially cutting the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) off completely from the only weapons that can stop Russia’s ballistic missile.

He has offered a trade, which the US has so far rejected. "My latest model was: We don't target Russian diesel, you give us missiles for Patriot systems to protect our facilities. But they just want us to stop attacking diesel," Zelenskiy said. The White House has already refused Kyiv any reward for halting the strikes, and Ukraine's interceptor missiles run dry as Russia's winter campaign intensifies. Coupled with a new class of Geran-5 jet powered drones, Ukraine is currently almost totally without effective air defences just as Russia scales up its winter bombing campaign.

The intelligence tap has been turned back on, for now. Zelenskiy said on NBC's Meet the Press on October 18 that the US had resumed intelligence sharing after blocking it for a period. The Washington Post reported on October 15 that US officials had warned Kyiv the flow would stop if Ukraine kept hitting Russian oil refineries, and Ukraine received no early warning of Russian ballistic missile launches on Kyiv on several occasions since October 12.

No satellite links, gas back on

Satellite links are the other pressure point. Ukraine has no access to the Pentagon's Starshield network, the military adjunct to the commercial Starlink communications network, and since October 14 Starlink terminals in Ukraine have shut down at speeds above 160 km/h, cutting out the interceptor drones Kyiv uses against Russia's jet-powered Shaheds, NV reported.

Ukrainian tests in EU countries ran the same terminals at more than 180 km/h. "The restrictions apply on Ukrainian territory, but they do not apply in EU countries. This means it is a planned operation," Zelenskiy said. US officials deny that Washington ordered any restriction.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are meanwhile pressing Ukraine and its European allies to accept the resumption of Russian gas transit through Ukrainian pipelines as part of a peace settlement, The New York Times reported. German officials pushed back hard at talks in Florida. Zelenskiy spoke to the two envoys on October 18 and said a face-to-face meeting with Trump's team could take place as early as this week.

Trump has made it clear from the start that he wants to do business with Russia. Zelenskiy reported earlier this year that there is a so-called Dmitriev package of deals worth an astonishing $12 trillion on the table. In addition to the gas project, the US envoys also suggested that some $100bn of Russian frozen assets be released and used to fund a US-Russia joint venture fund – a proposal rejected out of hand by Brussels.

Winter campaign

On the ground, Russia is trying to freeze Ukraine into submission as the heating season begins. Russian forces have massively scaled up strikes on what remains of Ukraine's energy and oil and gas facilities hitting them 76 times since Trump declared an "energy ceasefire" on October 11, Zelenskiy said on October 18. Russia has launched nearly 2,700 strike drones, 1,700 guided bombs and 66 missiles in the past week, most of them ballistic. Overnight strikes on substations in the Odesa, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions left tens of thousands of families without power as of October 18.

Ballistic missiles hit Kyiv on the nights of October 18 and October 19, killing at least one person in the first attack, the Kyiv Independent reported. A hospital was damaged in the second attack, and missile debris struck a 25-storey residential block, journalist and former presidential spokeswoman Iuliia Mendel reports. Pro-Russian military bloggers claimed strikes over the weekend also hit the Zaporizhstal steel mill and the Zaporizhtransformator plant in Zaporizhzhia and a metals plant in Kryvyi Rih.

Russia has already reduced Ukraine’s generation capacity from 54GW pre-war to 12GW as of July, creating a 5-6GW deficit, but the recent campaign has taken out around a quarter of the remaining capacity and has begun to target key substations linking what remains of the nuclear power generation capacity that link these power stations to the grid.

A Russian plan intercepted by Ukraine, reported by The New York Times on October 15, aims to isolate Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa without electricity, heat and water this winter, using about 70 ballistic missiles, 720 long-range drones and 150 guided bombs. Kyiv's three combined heat and power plants have already lost more than half their pre-war capacity of about 1.3 GW.

Despite being now completely responsible for Ukraine’s funding and military support, the EU has also not been invited to the mooted summit and without a rapporteur is currently playing no role in proposed peace talks whatsoever.

 

Putin seeks Ukraine summit with Trump and Xi but refuses talks with Zelenskyy

Copyright AP Photo

By Sasha Vakulina

Published on 19/10/2026 - EURONEWS

The proposed talks come as Washington eases economic pressure on Moscow while pressing Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, raising concerns in Kyiv that the Kremlin is securing concessions without making any of its own.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has reportedly proposed a three-way summit with US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping next month to negotiate an end to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to US media.

The proposal was reportedly made during a telephone conversation between Putin and Trump on 9 October, which also produced a controversial agreement involving Russian diesel exports to US and international markets.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that the Kremlin suggested holding the meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen which takes place on 18–19 November.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov confirmed to the paper that discussions were under way, although no agreement has been reached yet on the meeting or its agenda.

A senior US official told the newspaper that Trump has not agreed to attend but could be receptive to the proposal.

There was no indication that Ukraine would participate in the proposed talks.

The prospect of such a meeting comes as Trump seeks to revive negotiations with Moscow, arguing that imposing further economic pressure on Russia could undermine efforts to end the war.

Smoke billows into the sky following Ukrainian drone strikes on an industrial zone in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. AP Photo

"My decision on Russia is a very simple one," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.

"I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don't want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table. Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations!"

He offered no details of any concessions secured from Moscow.

Trump defends Russian diesel deal amid growing criticism

Trump's remarks followed his decision on 16 October to waive a series of new sanctions and tariffs targeting Russia and countries trading with it, just days before the measures were due to take effect.

The move came a week after his agreement with Putin on Russian diesel exports, as Washington seeks to contain soaring fuel prices exacerbated by the war in Iran.

Trump defended the diesel arrangement by arguing that Russia had refrained from providing more substantial assistance to Iran in its conflict with the US.

"Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way," he wrote.

A young woman reacts as she looks at her damaged home after Russia's night missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. AP Photo

He also praised Moscow for supplying diesel to global markets at reduced prices, portraying the agreement as a contribution to easing pressure on international energy supplies.

At the same time, Washington has increasingly pressed Kyiv to suspend its campaign against Russian oil refineries, which Ukraine considers legitimate military targets because of the revenue they generate for Moscow's war effort.

The Trump administration even reportedly threatened to suspend intelligence-sharing and weapons deliveries unless Ukraine halted the strikes.

The dispute further strained relations between Washington and Kyiv, particularly as Russia continues to bombard Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

Relate

Zelenskyy accuses partners of ignoring reality of Russia's war

Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that easing pressure on Moscow risks prolonging the war, accusing Russia of rejecting diplomatic efforts to end the conflict while intensifying its attacks on Ukraine.

His latest comments followed another overnight bombardment in which, according to Zelenskyy, Russian forces launched 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region, alongside more than 200 drones across the country, including jet-powered variants.

More than ten energy facilities were damaged, leaving at least 550,000 households without electricity, he said. A medical clinic, a school, a metro station and residential buildings were also damaged.

Zelenskyy also said Ukraine had once again received no advance warning from its partners about the incoming ballistic missiles.

"Putin not only doesn't want to end this war – he doesn't even want to take any steps toward de-escalation," Zelenskyy wrote on X.

He stressed that Ukraine had responded positively to every ceasefire proposal put forward by its partners, while Russia had continued its attacks.

"When deliveries of missiles for Ukraine's air defence are blocked while Russia is granted relief or delays in sanctions, this is, unfortunately, a denial of reality on the part of our partners," he said.

"The reality is that the war continues, and it continues solely because of Russian strikes and Russia's desire to drag this war out," Zelenskyy said.