MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky said that he would not agree to a trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and US leader Donald Trump in Moscow.
At a meeting with reporters, Zelensky named Austria, Switzerland, or Turkey as possible venues for such a meeting. "There can be no meeting in Moscow," Zelensky said.
"As for Budapest as a venue, I think it's not easy today. <...> And, to be honest, Budapest did not support us," he added.
Earlier, CNN reported, citing three White House officials, that the White House was considering Hungary and Switzerland as possible venues for a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, as well as for a subsequent trilateral summit with US President Donald Trump.
On August 15, Putin and Trump met at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. The meeting lasted about three hours, including a one-on-one conversation in the US leader's limousine en route to the main venue of the talks and talks in a three-on-three format. In a statement to the press following the talks, Putin said that settling the Ukrainian conflict was the main topic of the summit. On August 18, Trump held a meeting in Washington with Zelensky and European leaders. The US leader also called Putin. According to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, Putin and Trump expressed their support for continuing direct consultations between Moscow and Kiev. The idea of raising the level of these consultations was also considered.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later noted that Russia is ready for talks on Ukraine in any format, provided that the work is honest and does not boil down to dragging the US into Europe's aggressive, belligerent campaign.