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Zelensky invites Putin to the Donbas front line
Summary
A retrospective on the Ukrainian president's offer of a face-to-face meeting, made days after a dispute over the Kerch Strait.
What did Ukraine's president hope to achieve by inviting his Russian counterpart to the front line? On 21 April 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky invited Vladimir Putin to meet face to face in the war-torn Donbas to negotiate an end to the conflict.
The offer came against a tense backdrop. On 15 April 2021, Ukraine had protested an alleged Russian announcement that, beginning the following week, the Kerch Strait would be closed to foreign warships and state ships until October.
Two signals in one week
Taken together, the two developments show relations between Kyiv and Moscow at a moment of friction over maritime access and, at the same time, a public Ukrainian call for direct talks. Kyiv objected to the reported closure on 15 April, and six days later its president proposed a meeting in the area where the war in Donbas was being fought.
The location was itself a message: the invitation placed the proposed talks at the conflict zone rather than in a neutral capital. Any response from Moscow lay beyond that date.
