Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he is ready to make “some compromise” on his demand that a ceasefire takes place before any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin – as long as some security guarantees for Ukraine are established.

The Kremlin hasn't ruled out summits but has said they could only meet in the very final stages of clinching a peace agreement.

According to former Defense Committee Chairman Tobias Ellwood, Zelensky did not have the upper hand; Trump did, as the 79-year-old, who himself is believed to have been “manipulated” by Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Alaska last week ...

Russia has yet again ignored Donald Trump’s bid to hold a summit between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky and said attempts to resolve security issues for Kyiv without Moscow’s participation was a “road to nowhere”.

President Trump seeks to broker a meeting of the two leaders to end Europe’s most destructive war in generations.

Doing so would require the Russian leader to “accept the failure of sitting down with a president he considers a joke from a country that doesn’t exist”

A summit in Paris six years ago was the first and only time the two presidents ever met, flanked by French president Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel. At the time, Putin and Zelensky were looking to hash out a ceasefire deal for war in Donbas in Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed forces were fighting Ukrainian troops.

Zelensky talks puts Kremlin in a bind: accept and legitimise Kyiv’s leader or refuse and face fresh US sanctions. Read here