“Our task now is to do everything so that Putin does not have the opportunity to choose a different path.”
On June 3, the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), the city was attacked by Ukrainian drones. On June 4, Vladimir Zelensky published an open letter to Vladimir Putin calling on him to come together and end the war. However, the tone of the letter was more offensive than conciliatory. Putin refused to meet.
father words Ukrainska Pravda’s interlocutors in the Ukrainian parliament, the drones, and the letter form part of a broader “military-diplomatic campaign” for Ukraine, which should lead Putin to the conclusion that there is no alternative to “serious negotiations.”
A union source in Zelensky’s office said: “It is not clear whether Putin wants to enter into quick negotiations. But there are many indirect signals and hints from all world power centers that indicate that this situation may change by the fall, such that he will have no other choice. Our task now is to do everything so that Putin does not have the opportunity to choose another path.”
“Wait until July and you will see what Ukrainian power is.”
After the start of the American war with Iran, the Russian-Ukrainian peace negotiations, which were managed by representatives of the Donald Trump administration, stopped. A member of Zelensky’s diplomatic team told UP: “We must state the obvious: the previous negotiation process is effectively dead. It has frozen and is not moving anywhere.”
The Ukrainian president’s office is now simultaneously trying to return US attention to the negotiations, involve the Europeans in the process, and find ways to strengthen his positions. Kiev sees its advantages as mobilizing long-range strikes against Russia, denying the Russian military access to Starlink satellite communications, and achieving a breakthrough with medium-range drones.
The last factor has already turned the Rostov-Simferopol highway into a road of death and caused a fuel crisis in Crimea. The goal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the so-called “operational drone blockade,” which will cut off the land corridor leading to the annexed peninsula. According to UP’s interlocutors in the Supreme Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, this process is already underway. “Wait until July and you will see what Ukrainian power is,” one of them said, without elaborating.
“There may be an opportunity for negotiations in October and November.”
Against this background, Zelensky intensified media pressure on Putin. Its elements were letters addressed to the Russian President: unofficial, transmitted through billionaire Roman Abramovich, and public, published on the website of the President of Ukraine.
Abramovich has already tried to establish a dialogue between Russia and Ukraine in 2022. In May 2026, he personally came to Kiev and met with Zelensky. According to the Ukrainian leader, Abramovich wanted to know what concessions Kiev is ready to make on the issue of peace negotiations. Zelensky responded that Ukraine would not hand over Donbass to Russia. He also told the businessman that he was offering Putin a personal interview. UP wrote that Zelensky’s letter was accompanied by an “attachment” from the Ukrainian negotiating team. The newspaper describes its essence as follows: the Russian army misleads Putin about the true state of affairs on the front, and the entire Donbass will not be captured until the end of the summer or in the fall; When Putin realizes that Ukraine warned him about this, he should stop and come to the negotiating table.
Zelensky’s open letter to Putin also became an invitation to a personal meeting and negotiations. But his main goal was to try to impose his agenda on Russia and return the international public’s attention to Ukraine, and immediate approval from Putin was not expected in Zelensky’s office.
“No one in Bankova expected that Putin would agree to end the war in June or July. But among Ukrainian interlocutors, another date is increasingly being heard – October-November,” writes UP. The post quotes the words of an interviewer from Zelensky’s diplomatic team: “Exactly [в октябре-ноябре]Thanks to the combination of all factors: military, diplomatic and international, a certain window of opportunity for negotiations may open. Somewhere before the US elections and after the Russian elections to the State Duma.
According to people from Zelensky’s team, by the end of the fall, there will be an opportunity “at least diplomatically to fix a new balance of power on the battlefield” and achieve a gradual cessation of hostilities. The Ukrainian leadership intends to use the remaining months to strengthen its military and diplomatic positions before possible negotiations.