Kiev Yet To Receive Official Proposal From Kazakhstan To Host Zelenskyy-Putin Meeting

Kiev Yet to Receive Official Proposal From Kazakhstan to Host Zelenskyy-Putin Meeting

Ukraine has not yet received any official proposal from Kazakhstan to host a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a Normandy-format summit on settling the Donbas crisis should be held first anyway, Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said on Thursday

KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th November, 2019) Ukraine has not yet received any official proposal from Kazakhstan to host a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a Normandy-format summit on settling the Donbas crisis should be held first anyway, Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said on Thursday.

Former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev proposed on Tuesday to hold negotiations between Putin and Zelenskyy in Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev claimed that he had already received the consent of the Ukrainian president to a face-to-face meeting with the Russian leader.

"We have not received officially this initiative by Kazakhstan, and I think that Ukraine has plenty of possibilities to meet in the Normandy Four [format] at this stage. This is exactly for the sake of this meeting that certain painful steps have been taken. Let us first meet within the Normandy Four framework," Prystaiko said at a briefing, as aired by Ukrainian broadcasters.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sputnik on Wednesday that it would be premature to discuss the possibility of the bilateral meeting, as the focus was on preparing a new Normandy Four summit.