This article was originally published in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Read the original article. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected a proposal by his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to meet for face-to-face talks to end the war as senseless, calling for the country's military to "do the job."

"I see no point in meeting. It only makes sense for the Ukrainian side," Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, adding that a potential cease-fire would only help Kyiv to stop Russian ground offensives.

Putin's comments come a day after Zelenskyy published an open letter urging the Russian president to stop the war, now well into its fifth year, and indicating that Kyiv has no intention of giving up the lasting fight.

"Ukraine is ready for a full cease-fire for the duration of the negotiations," Zelenskyy wrote on June 4, suggesting the situation along the stalled front line would not change in Russia's favor in the foreseeable future.

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Following Putin's remarks rejecting a meeting, Zelenskyy said, "Unfortunately, the Russian side is choosing war again -- everyone heard today's response."

"A weak response. He simply doesn't want to end the war," Zelensky added.

Zelenskyy's call to relaunch the peace process follows diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump that appear to have stalled in recent months, particularly since the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

Washington has for months sought to balance the positions of Kyiv and Moscow to end the war, but the two sides remained far apart, with Kremlin sticking to its hard-line stance and offering no compromise on control of Ukraine's key eastern region of Donetsk.

While diplomacy has appeared to lose momentum and has been limited to exchanges of prisoners of war, the fighting on the front line and mutual military strikes have shown no signs of easing.

Although military analysts and research groups reported that Russia's latest spring offensives have yielded little to no territorial gains for Moscow, 2026 reportedly marked the first time in years that Ukrainian forces recaptured more territory than they lost.

"You regularly postpone, every few months, your own deadlines for capturing our regions -- especially the Donetsk region. And you will not capture it this year either," Zelenskyy's letter said.

Putin, however, has been offering a different view on frontline dynamics. Prior to his speech in St. Petersburg, he claimed that the Russian Army was still advancing in Ukraine. At the forum, he reiterated: "[Military actions] will end once we have achieved the goals we have set for ourselves."

As Zelenskyy said Ukraine had survived its "hardest" winter -- with Russian strikes pounding energy and civilian infrastructure and leaving thousands of residents in the cold and dark -- Moscow has continued to attack Ukrainian cities through the spring.

Earlier in the week, Russian strikes on Ukraine's major cities, including Kyiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, which has long became a key volunteer hub hosting thousands of refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, killed and injured dozens of people.

While Zelenskyy's letter marked a rare effort at direct communication with Putin, it also pointed out that Ukraine had been responding, particularly through long-range drone strikes that threatened Russia's Victory Day parade on Moscow's Red Square and forced the Kremlin to scale back the celebrations.

Attacking territories up to 1,000 kilometers from its border, Ukraine has stepped up its deep strikes on energy and military infrastructure inside Russia, seeking to curb Moscow's profits from the spike in global oil prices triggered by the US war with Iran and Tehran's effective blockade of the key Strait of Hormuz.

Asked about the matter at a plenary session in St. Petersburg on June 5, Putin acknowledged that the strikes had inflicted a certain amount of economic damage to Russia but claimed they posed no immediate threat to the country's economy or to potential investors.

Putin said he saw Zelenskyy's letter as "rude" and that it was "no way to set up a face-to-face meeting."

"We should address not the authors of this letter, nor lovers of the epistolary genre, but our fighters on the front line," he said. "Do your job, brothers."

Copyright (c)2025 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

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