Kremlin: No Progress about the Meeting of Putin and Zelensky

At the moment, there is no progress in organizing a meeting between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, as well as the Normandy four. On Friday, June 4, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said there was no specifics on the meeting of Vladimir Putin with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, TASS reported. "No. We have not yet received any specific business proposals on the agenda of such a potential meeting through the office of the President of Ukraine," he said. Commenting on Kiev's statements about its intention to discuss the Crimea topic, he said that "this is not entirely correlated with what the President of the Russian Federation said." "Crimea as a problem for Ukraine is not subject to discussion. It can be discussed from the point of view of tourism potential, as a Russian health resort for Ukrainian citizens, cross-border cooperation of Russian regions with neighboring states. But in the context proposed by the Ukrainian side, this is not subject to discussion", Peskov said. Also, a Kremlin spokesman said that there is no progress on the issue of organizing a meeting of the leaders of the Normandy quartet. "There is an understanding that meetings should take place. All parties agree that they must continue their hard work," he said. "There is an understanding that the foreign ministers should meet and the summit should also be held, but we need to do the 'homework' before that. The work continues, but very, very tenacious," Peskov said. He added that "Kiev's disposition to substitute the Minsk agreements "has a negative effect on this process. "Probably, there is a very not carefully concealed disposition of Ukraine to some kind of substitution of the Minsk agreements for something," Peskov said, noting that there are a number of previous agreements, with the implementation of which problems have arisen. Meanwhile, the Kremlin prepares for Putin's meeting with US President Joe Biden on June 16 in Geneva. The Ukrainian topic might be touched upon during the meeting.