Photo: Sergei Bobylyov / EPA
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich traveled to Kyiv in May and held a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Financial Times reports, citing four sources. Earlier, Vladimir Putin mentioned a visit by a Russian businessman to the Ukrainian capital but did not name him.
Details. According to FT, last month Zelensky invited Abramovich to Kyiv in an attempt to persuade Putin to agree to direct peace talks. The newspaper’s sources say that during the conversation, the Ukrainian leader asked the businessman to pass on a message to Putin expressing readiness for a personal meeting.
A day earlier, Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko also said that it was Abramovich who had met with Zelensky.
Context. On June 4, Zelensky published an open letter to Putin calling for a meeting and an agreement on peace. The next day, Putin replied that he saw no point in it. He added that at the end of May, a certain business representative had already met with Zelensky in Kyiv and then conveyed his proposal for a meeting.
Roman Abramovich is the only Russian businessman who took part in peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv back in 2022. FT wrote that his participation had been personally approved by Putin.