Zelenskyy says he refuses talks with Putin, describes Russian dictator as ‘insane’

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Zelenskyy gave his view after an Italian journalist asked whether he was ready to talk to Putin if necessary.

In response, the Ukrainian leader recalled that when he became president, he tried to negotiate with the head of the aggressor state to end the hybrid war in Donbas, but it did not yield any results.

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"There is nothing to talk to him about," Zelenskyy stated.

"I'll give you an example from my life. In 2019, I became president. There was a lot of different criticism, people didn't want to talk to Putin. I said: 'I will, I will try a dialog'. It didn't give me any advantages in politics – I genuinely wanted to end the war, I wanted to find an agreement. It took us a long time to decide, because he was like a princess, sorry, he couldn't find a format in which we could meet. We did everything, and I did everything, to have a conversation."

And in the end, he recalled, an agreement was reached with Russia on a ceasefire, but the Russians did not adhere to it.

"We had a dialog on the phone, we had a meeting in the Normandy format," the head of state said.

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"We exchanged the first 110 people and I was very happy. We agreed not to shoot: 'Let's do this - there will be a ceasefire for some time, and after that we will move on'. Daily provocations (began): one person was wounded, one person was killed. I called him, and there was a conversation that it could not be an accident: there are snipers from the occupied territories along this border (demarcation line). It was a live safari: they were coming and practicing on us. And everybody knew that they were bringing these special forces and these snipers from other territories where they were fighting. It was a safari. They allowed them to train on us, on living people."

Zelenskyy said that he tried to have a dialog with Putin, but the Russian leader in fact didn't want (to find a compromise).

"I tried to find a dialog," the president said.

"After that, we did not have any dialog. I made many requests to the Kremlin. I never hid it. I called all the states, absolutely: Israel, the United States, Britain, Germany, France. I asked everyone. I just wanted to talk on the phone. I said that I believed that the number of shots was increasing, the number of deaths on the contact line was increasing, there was a serious threat, there could be an escalation."

But Putin, according to him, agreed to the talks only to use them to his advantage.

"With whom to talk?," Zelenskyy asked.

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"With whom? He doesn't want anything. It's a joke for him. Now that he sees that he has become weaker, Russia is looking for something to calm down all the states. So that sanctions are not imposed, so that we are not helped, it can take some diplomatic step. But after that, believe me, in a year's time, he will come in an invasion to kill us again. Everything is obvious with him: he does not understand what is happening, he is an insane human."

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Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine