Zelensky Offers Putin a Meeting at the G7 Summit
Ukraine's president says he signaled Moscow through several channels that he was ready to meet Putin while Trump and Macron were in Evian, but no clear answer came from the Kremlin.
- Zelensky says Ukraine sent a message that it is ready to meet Putin during the G7 summit in Evian.
- The offer was relayed through intermediaries, diplomats and intelligence channels, but Moscow gave no clear answer.
- There was no official bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelensky on June 15.
- The G7 summit runs from June 15 to June 17 in Evian.
For Serbia, which measures every shift along the Kyiv, Moscow and Washington axis against its own position between the Western sanctions regime and its economic ties to Russia, the signal from Evian carries real weight. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the Group of Seven summit that Kyiv had told Moscow it was ready to meet Vladimir Putin, precisely as US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron gathered on the Alpine lake. So far, he says, there has been no reply.
“We sent a message that we are ready to meet Putin during the G7, because Trump and Macron are here,” Zelensky said, describing the move as an attempt to use the highest level of world diplomacy to reopen a channel that has stood shut for months. According to him, the proposal went out along several parallel lines, through intermediaries, diplomats and intelligence channels, a sign that Kyiv is not counting on a single formal route but is trying to deliver the message wherever it can get through.
What is Kyiv really after in Evian?
The point of Ukraine’s move is not only a possible meeting between the two presidents. Zelensky came to Evian to find out how close the United States is to imposing new sanctions on Russia, a decision he stressed rests with Trump. That gives the Ukrainian delegation a double lever: an openly stated invitation to Moscow on one side and pressure through a possible new sanctions package on the other.
The multilateral format of the summit suits Kyiv because it brings together, in one place, the very actors who shape both the course of the war and its financing. The presence of Trump and Macron gives the meeting offer a different weight than it would carry through an ordinary bilateral channel, since any agreement by Moscow would be a gesture toward the entire assembled leadership rather than toward Kyiv alone. That is exactly why the Kremlin’s silence speaks as loudly as a reply would.
Two things that early reports tend to blur deserve to be kept apart. There was no official bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelensky on the margins of the summit on June 15, which means Ukrainian diplomacy at this gathering is working through wider-format talks and groundwork rather than prearranged face-to-face sessions. The geopolitical reality is that moves like this are judged only by what follows in the coming days.
Why does Moscow’s answer matter most?
The Kremlin had not commented on the Ukrainian offer by the close of the summit, and that very absence of a reaction becomes part of the message. Unlike earlier occasions when Moscow rejected similar initiatives publicly and quickly, this time the silence leaves room for readings on both sides, from a tactical delay to outright dismissal.
The Evian summit runs through June 17, so Kyiv has a few more days to see whether the message draws any echo, and whether Washington shifts its sanctions decision in a direction that would hand Ukraine added leverage. For observers in Brussels and the region, the outcome of this episode will show whether the transatlantic link is ready to turn diplomatic pressure into a concrete step, or whether this attempt too will stay in the realm of signals with no follow-up.
Do you think Moscow’s silence means refusal, or merely waiting for a better moment?
