A possible future meeting of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be complicated, said Leonid Kuchma, the second president of Ukraine, ex-head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG).
“Everything is possible in life. The main thing is the desire of our president … We will be waiting for a signal from the other side. But this meeting is too complicated from all points of view. It seems to me that I could be wrong – the conversation will be in different languages,” Kuchma said in an interview with journalists at the YES Brainstorming forum.
According to him, it is not yet clear whether Putin is ready to meet in the framework of problems that now exist in Ukrainian-Russian relations and to take “specific steps.”
Kuchma added that the big question is whether it is worth “just going nowhere and coming with nothing.”
YES Brainstorming is a new format event for the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. The topic of the meeting is entitled “After COVID Means Before the Disaster? Steps to Survival.”
The annual meetings of the Yalta European Strategy, a public organization that would facilitate the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU, have been held since 2004 at the initiative of Victor Pinchuk. YES meetings have become an open platform for discussing new ideas and views on the development paths of Europe, Ukraine and the whole world.
Criminal proceedings against fifth president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, which were initiated at the request of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, were closed before the visit of incumbent head of the country Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States, Poroshenko’s attorneys said.
“Literally synchronized with the flight of President Zelensky to the United States, criminal proceedings were closed, which at one time was registered at the request of Kolomoisky,” attorney-at-law Ihor Holovan said according to the European Solidarity party’s website.
United States President Joe Biden, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said the partnership between Kyiv and Washington will strengthen in the future.
“I am pleased to welcome President Zelensky to the Oval Office in the White House. During the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, the partnership between our countries is stronger than ever and will become even stronger,” Biden said during talks with Zelensky, the video of which made public by the Dom television channel in Telegram.
He also said that Ukraine and the United States have common values and goals, in particular, regarding the provision of peace and stability in Europe.
“Ukraine and the United States have common values. We are unswervingly committed to our long-term goal for Europe: to make it whole, free and peaceful,” the U.S. President said.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is paying a working visit to the United States.
The leaders’ talks are scheduled for 21:00 Kyiv time (14:00 local time) in the Oval Office of the White House, according to the public schedule of the U.S. President. The next event in Biden’s schedule is the weekly economic briefing at 4:30 p.m., which means that the presidents of the United States and Ukraine will not hold a joint briefing on the results of the talks.
The meeting of the Presidents of Ukraine and the United States, Volodymyr Zelensky and Joseph Biden, will take place on August 31 in Washington, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.
“In connection with the extension of the elements of the visit program, the meeting of the heads of state of Ukraine and the United States, Presidents Biden and Zelensky, will take place on August 31,” Kuleba said at an online briefing on Thursday.
The minister said that it was agreed to postpone the date of the meeting, in particular, due to the fact that the format of the meeting of the presidents was expanded, and now it will envisage not only a meeting of delegations, but also a face-to-face meeting. According to him, the head of the Ukrainian state will begin a visit to the United States at the invitation of the President of the United States on August 30 and will visit not only the capital of Washington, but also the state of California.
“The agenda will include a number of important events in Washington DC and the state of California. These are two basic points for the president’s visit. No president of Ukraine has been so far in the United States before, never visited another U.S. coast in the Pacific Ocean, although it is the state of California where the largest IT companies, high-tech space industry is located, and this is exactly where Ukraine has strong trump cards,” he said.
Kuleba added that the president would visit the state of California to create new opportunities for interaction between the United States and Ukraine in these areas and attract new U.S. investments in the Ukrainian economy.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine is ready for a new wave of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the coming autumn, no worse than European countries.
“We are ready in the autumn [for a new wave of COVID-19], which was not regarding hospitals, beds, the number of ambulances, the salaries of doctors who receive 300% and fight COVID-19, with oxygen. We are ready, I think, in this case, at the level of other European countries. And definitely not worse,” Zelensky told journalists at the Ukraine 30. Decentralization All-Ukrainian Forum.
He said “the infrastructure was not built in Ukraine, as in some countries, so it was necessary to build quickly and in sufficient quantity.”
“We have 90,000 open beds for patients with coronavirus, of which the filling is from 10,000 to 50,000,” Zelensky said.
The president also said that “miscalculations in preparing medicine for the coronavirus epidemic existed all over the world.”
