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Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected an offer from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold a face-to-face meeting to end the war.

Getting into it: Speaking at Russia’s St. Petersburg economic forum on Friday, Putin said, “I don’t see any point for now,” dismissing the open letter that carried the offer as “rude” and refusing to even say Zelensky’s name, calling him only the letter’s author. He argued that pausing the fighting now would just hand Ukraine time to regroup, insisting that detailed agreements must come first. “Let the experts work, develop some solutions, and then we can meet,” he said, framing the proposal as a maneuver designed to make a meeting impossible rather than to arrange one.

The letter itself, published Thursday, marked the first time Zelensky had reached out to Putin directly since 2022. It proposed a summit in a neutral country alongside a full ceasefire for the duration of talks, an all-for-all prisoner exchange, and the return of Ukrainian kids Russia seized during the war. It also came in swinging, defiant and at times openly mocking, casting the invasion as Putin’s “personal choice,” jabbing that “age is beginning to take its toll” after decades in power, and warning that “when Russia grows tired, change comes.”

Putin held firm on his maximal demands, repeating that the war will end only “once we have achieved the goals we have set for ourselves.” That includes Ukraine surrendering the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and abandoning its NATO bid, with Putin claiming Russia has already taken all of Luhansk, something Kyiv flatly rejects. He brushed off the dig about his age and went after Zelensky over his expired presidential term, suggesting that clinging to power amounts to “usurpation.” Zelensky fired back that Russia “is once again choosing war,” calling it “a weak response” that “will have disappointed many in the world.”

Behind the public sparring, there had also been a quiet back-channel. Ukraine reportedly leaned on sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich back in May to get word to Putin that Zelensky was willing to sit down, and Putin acknowledged rebuffing a representative of Russia’s “business circles” around that time.

This all comes as Trump said “it would be great” if the two leaders met and hoped that the fighting would stop, noting that over 30,000 soldiers a month are dying due to the war.