Zelensky calls for face-to-face talks with Putin

UKRAINE’S President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Vladimir Putin to meet him face to face, warning that a failure to engage in peace talks will lead to military losses from which Russia will take ‘generations to recover’.

In a video defiantly filmed outside his presidential office in the besieged capital Kyiv, Mr Zelensky, right, said: ‘I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. The time has come for a meeting. It is time to talk. It’s time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine. Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be such that it will take you several generations to recover.’

Russia’s invasion is floundering. Western intelligence estimates that about 7,000 Russian troops, including at least four generals, have been killed.

Ukraine puts the figure at 14,000 and, in its last bulletin on deaths, Moscow has it at about 500.

Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin last met in Paris more than two years ago, and while Ukrainian and Russian officials have made little progress in talks, Turkey has been pushing for a summit involving the two leaders.

While Mr Zelensky called for peace talks, he also repeated his call on the West to step up its sanctions on Russian elites and banks.

Addressing a protest outside the Swiss parliament in Berne, he said: ‘Your banks are where the money of the people who unleashed this war lies. That is painful. That is also a fight against evil, that their accounts are frozen. Ukrainians feel what it is when cities are destroyed. They are being destroyed on the orders of people who live in European, in beautiful Swiss towns, who enjoy property in your cities. It would really be good to strip them of this privilege.’

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss this weekend voiced scepticism about Putin’s desire to discuss a deal. Russia, which has suggested a 15-point peace plan that includes Kyiv renouncing ambitions to join Nato, accused America of stopping Ukraine from doing a deal.