Zelensky Announced Start of Dialogue with Putin

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that he managed to establish a dialogue with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He said this in an interview with The Time of Israel newspaper. Zelensky recalled that he had a meeting and several phone conversations with the Russian colleague. “We constructed a format for our dialogue that resulted in some sensitive decisions. We have returned our prisoners, our ships. After three years without meetings, we managed to agree on the Normandy Format. After that, there was a second exchange of prisoners,” Ukraine’s President told. According to Zelensky, Putin understands that Ukraine is an independent country, “the biggest in Europe”. On December 9, the Normandy Four leaders held a summit in Paris, in the framework of which the first face-to-face meeting of Putin and Zelensky took place, which lasted 1 hour 20 minutes. The Russian leader said the talks were businesslike. Zelensky noted that the conversation ended in a “draw”. Later, experts called the dialogue between the presidents of Russia and Ukraine moving to a “qualitatively new level”, and also predicted improvement in relations between the two countries.