The Russian government has responded after Ukraine’s President, Volodimir Zelenskyy said ‘Putin is nobody to me’.
In a recent interview with Sky News, published , Thursday, January 26, Zelensky told British journalist Kay Burley that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is ‘nobody’ to him following the full-scale invasion and that he has no interest in meeting with him.
‘It is not interesting for me,’ he said about a potential face-to-face meeting with Putin.
Zelensky and Putin first met during the Normandy Format summit in December 2019, seven months after Zelensky became president.
The Normandy Format was launched in 2014 to find a peaceful resolution to the War in Ukraine’s Donbas and the Russian annexation of Crimea.
‘Not interesting to meet, not interesting to speak. Why? Because we had meeting with him in Normandy Format, it was before the full-scale invasion. I saw the man who said one thing and then did another.”
Ending the war was also one of Zelensky’s main campaign promises during the presidential election in 2019.
All parties (Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany) agreed on the need for peace and the implementation of the political provisions of the Minsk agreements.
However, Russia’s promises were short lived, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Responding to Zelensky on Thursday, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is no match for his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
In answer to a query regarding Zelenskyy’s statement that he is ‘not interested’ in seeing the Russian president for peace talks, Peskov made his remarks.
Zelenskyy has ‘long ceased to be a possible opponent for Putin,’ Peskov said.
‘We know with what promises Zelenskyy was elected president, it is absolutely not difficult to remember them ourselves and remind those voters who voted for him in Ukraine,’ Peskov told journalists during a daily press call.
‘He did not solve the problem of Donbass (Donbas in Ukrainian), he did not fulfil the Minsk agreements, moreover, as it turned out, he was not going to fulfil them, he was preparing for war,’ he said.
‘Therefore, let’s put it this way, he himself has long ceased to be a possible opponent for Putin,’ Peskov continued.
