Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that there are no current plans for a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent suggestion that such talks were imminent.

Doing so would require the Russian leader to “accept the failure of sitting down with a president he considers a joke from a country that doesn’t exist”

The Kremlin is keeping its options open, but analysts said the Russian leader would probably only meet with his Ukrainian counterpart to accept a capitulation.

The Kremlin hasn't ruled out summits but has said they could only meet in the very final stages of clinching a peace agreement.

Russia has yet again ignored Donald Trump’s bid to hold a summit between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky and said attempts to resolve security issues for Kyiv without Moscow’s participation was a “road to nowhere”.

If Russia’s Vladimir Putin rejects a bilateral summit with Ukraine’s leader, the U.S. should take strong measures, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

New demands from Russia as well as their relentless attacks are all threatening to derail peace talks that we've been expecting with Ukraine.

A summit in Paris six years ago was the first and only time the two presidents ever met, flanked by French president Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s then-chancellor Angela Merkel. At the time, Putin and Zelensky were looking to hash out a ceasefire deal for war in Donbas in Ukraine’s east, where Russia-backed forces were fighting Ukrainian troops.