Zelensky needles Putin in personal letter calling for face-to-face peace talks

By Victoria Butenko, Katharina Krebs, Nina Subkhanberdina, Ivana Kottasová, Anna Chernova, CNN

(CNN) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the four-year-long war in an open letter posted as the Russian leader attends the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Zelensky’s timing – in the middle of the event where Russian billionaires schmooze with political leaders and decision makers – is no coincidence. The Russian economy is struggling and Zelensky is hoping he can capitalize on the rising disquiet among the business elites about the situation.

“We can all see that Russians are finally becoming less comfortable with this reality – with the fact that the war is bringing more and more negative consequences to Russia,” Zelensky wrote. “They do not like the fact that there is no end in sight to your war.”

The Ukrainian leader said Putin “regularly” postpones deadlines to capture Ukrainian regions, specifically Donetsk.

“And you will not capture it this year either,” he said.

Zelensky struck a personal note in the letter, addressing Putin directly and warning him about his future: “(You) will have to fight much harder for your own existence – not Russia’s, but your own. And this is not a threat from me or from Ukraine. It is a fact of Russian history that you know well: when Russia grows tired, change comes.”

“We can work toward that fatigue. You can stop your war,” he added.

Ukraine is nowhere near winning the war, but it does appear to have the upper hand in some areas along the front lines. Kyiv has also greatly increased its ability to strike deep inside Russia, targeting energy facilities and other strategic targets far away from the borders.

To hammer home that message, Ukraine struck St. Petersburg just as attendees of the prestigious forum – sometimes dubbed “Russia’s Davos” – were gathering there this week.

Western experts have long pointed out that the way Russia is waging the war is unsustainable – both in terms of the economy and human capital. The International Institute for Strategic Studies has recently pointed out that the Kremlin will “soon face a fundamental choice over whether to radically escalate its demands on Russia’s economy and society or to scale back its war aims.”

But voices warning about the state of the economy have recently begun to emerge even inside Russia. German ⁠Gref, the boss of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, said on Friday that continued economic growth in the ​current circumstances is “already a miracle.”

Still, the Kremlin has so far dismissed the warnings as Putin continues to push his maximalist demands that include Ukraine giving up even some of the territory that remains under its control. Meanwhile, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Friday that the country’s economy was “in a state of controlled cooling.”

‘He can come to Moscow’

Zelensky called for a direct meeting with Putin to end the war and stressed that peace shouldn’t wait until the US turned its attention from Iran to the Ukraine-Russia war.

“We see that the United States is fully focused on the issue of Iran, and it would be wrong to simply wait until the war in Europe returns to the center of its attention,” Zelensky said.

“Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us – and you. I am proposing a meeting,” he wrote, adding that it should take place in a third country and that a clear date should be set. During those meetings, Zelensky said a full ceasefire needs to be in place.

“An attempt to establish real silence is the best way to begin talking to one another.”

The Kremlin has seen Zelensky’s letter and Putin was briefed on it, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. He also said that if Zelensky wants to meet Putin, “he can come to Moscow.”

Zelensky reiterated in the letter that him traveling to the Russian capital is a non-starter – unsurprisingly, given the number of Russian-sponsored assassination attempts that Ukrainian security services say they’ve foiled in the past.

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Putin said proposals made by US President Donald Trump to end the war could “be the basis” for peace agreements but would require compromise from both countries.

“We generally agreed to these compromises. We just need to convince the Ukrainian side of this, and that’s it,” he said. “But overall, I believe they could very well be the basis for agreements between Russia and Ukraine and could put an end to this conflict.”

Trump vowed to quickly end the war when he took office in January 2025, but he’s made no tangible progress and has been criticized for seemingly siding with Russia on more than one occasion.

But he suffered a defeat on the issue on Thursday after more than a dozen Republican lawmakers defied their own leadership – Trump himself – by voting with Democrats to approve a major bill to deliver billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine while imposing steep sanctions on Russia.

If passed by the Senate, the bill would be Congress’s first big move on the Ukraine-Russia war since spring 2024, when then-President Joe Biden was still in office. Still, Trump could veto the bill if it were to reach his desk.

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