Zelenskyy rejects Putin invitation: ‘He can come to Kyiv’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday declined Russian President Vladimir Putin’s suggestion he come to Moscow to negotiate a diplomatic settlement, addressing the proposal for the first time in an interview with ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz for “This Week.”

“He can come to Kyiv,” Zelenskyy said. “I can’t go to Moscow when my country’s under missiles, under attack, each day. I can’t go to the capital of this terrorist.”

Putin “understands this,” he told Raddatz.

Zelenskyy and Raddatz toured and sat down at the site of an American-owned manufacturing plant in western Ukraine that was the recent target of a Russian missile attack.

Zelenskyy said repeatedly that Putin doesn’t seek a meeting with him as he continues to prosecute the war in Ukraine.

The Russian president on Wednesday said “he has never been against meeting with Zelenskyy.”

“If Zelenskyy is ready, then let him come to Moscow,” Putin said. “This meeting will take place.”

Watch more of the Zelenskyy interview Sunday morning on “This Week.”

President Donald Trump has made a meeting between the two leaders a priority in his efforts to broker a peace deal.

“Ultimately, I’m going to put the two of them in a room,” he told Fox News in August.

Trump made a trilateral meeting between leaders of the U.S., Russia and Ukraine the goal of his summit in Alaska last month with Putin, and later said a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would happen after the Ukrainian leader came to the White House.

“A tri would happen,” the president maintained last week in an interview with The Daily Caller. “A bi, I don’t know about,” he said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said this week it was “clear” that a bilateral between Putin and Zelenskyy would not take place.

In the Friday interview with “This Week” co-anchor Raddatz, Zelenskyy said Putin’s offer was intended to “postpone the meeting,” insisting that he, Zelenskyy, was “ready for the meeting” in “any kind of format.”

Putin is “playing games with the United States,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha on X this week pointed to seven countries — Austria, the Holy See, Switzerland, Türkiye, and three Gulf states — which he said were ready to host peace talks that Zelenskyy would attend.

“If a person doesn’t want to meet during the war, of course, he can propose something which can’t be acceptable by me or by others,” Zelenskyy told Raddatz.

ABC News’ Julia Cherner contributed to this report.