According to newsukraine.rbc.ua President Zelensky "has no desire to communicate with Putin, as he considers him an enemy, but he allows for such a conversation for security reasons".
But is such meeting necessary to conclude a peace treaty between Ukraine and the Russian Federation?
Once the agreement is reached, both the presidents need to sign the treaty document. This does not require a personal meeting, but can be done by each side signing the treaty document and sending it for signature by the other, and the other side sending the signed by it document to the other party.
Nor is there any need for the two presidents to meet, or even talk to each other, at the time of the negotiations of the treaty. The normal procedure is for one party to prepare a draft version of the treaty and send it to the other side for its approval or amendment, and for the other side, either to accept the draft, or to amend it and send the amended version to back to the opposite side.
This procedure can take a few iterations, at the end of which, the parties either agree the final version, or come to the conclusion that no agreement is possible.
In fact, the Russian Federation did send to Ukraine such draft, but, instead of amending it and sending the amended version back to the Russian Federation, Zelensky was issuing public statements in which he was trying to present "Putin" as "aggressor" who wants Ukraine "to capitulate", and then arranging meetings with his European "friends" and President Trump, asking them to provide him support for continuing war against the Russian Federation.
Obviously, such behaviour has not been helping to achieve peace with the Russian Federation, although President Trump and his negotiators have been trying to produce a mutually acceptable version.
To the question by an interviewer, "What would you say to Putin at the meeting?", Zelensky said, "I think that the question of territories, the question of reasons for this war, why he is occupying us".
But there is no need to ask Putin this question, because the answer to it is clear from all the events of this conflict.
The conflict started in 2014 when the government of Ukraine was taken over by an anti-everything-Russian government, and the majority native Russian population of Crimea voted to separate from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, while the native Russian majority of Donbas proclaimed independent republics, which joined the Russian Federation in 2022.
If Zelensky believes, that these areas should be part of Ukraine, he should have stated so in his response to the Russian Memorandum, giving clear reasons for such beliefs. But, instead, he made some public statements that these areas are Ukraine, because it is written in the Ukraine Constitution.
But a country's constitution is applicable only within the country itself and has no effect on other countries, and, if he did give such reason for his non-acceptance of the Russian peace treaty draft, it would not have been accepted by the other side.
Talking about his mistrust of Putin, Zelensky said:
I don't trust him, and I will not. And he also doesn't trust me, it's understandable. But this is the problem.
My feeling that his goal was the occupation of all our territory, all our country. And I really want to hear and see that he will not come again.
Again, there is no need for the two presidents to meet each other in person, especially, if they do not trust each other, to resolve the problem of trust, which is a general problem with all agreements.
To make an agreement, both the sides need to have sufficient trust that the other side will not break the agreement, and, in case it does, is forced to comply with the agreement and be punished for the breach and its consequences. This is why it is customary to include in the text of an agreement a clause of what would happen, if one of the sides breaks the agreement.
So, to make a peace agreement there is no need for a personal meeting between Zelensky and Putin. The factors preventing the agreement are:
Of course, neither party is obliged to accept the other side's proposals, but then, they should honestly state so. But this would mean continuation of the war.
In the meanwhile, as both the parties say, that they want peace by agreement, rather than "fighting till victory, or the bitter end", then they need to keep sending each other their amended versions, until they either agree, or the war will go on.
But, if President Trump wants to end this war, he needs to include into the peace treaty the following clause:
The Government of the USA will give security guarantees to both the parties, that if either party makes any hostile move towards the other party, the USA will come to the support of the other party to protect it from such hostile move and will force the hostile party to compensate the victim party from the consequences of its hostile actions.
Of course, such "security guarantee" is not "ironclad", because the present USA government will not last for ever, and what another government will do is unpredictable. And even the present government can change its mind.
But then, this is the only guarantee that is available at the present times.
But the real security guarantee for Ukraine is to abandon all its claims and hostilities against the Russian Federation.
Within the USSR, the UkSSR not only was secure, but also increased in size, because the USSR governments added to it Russian lands in 1922, and Crimea in 1954, and, if not the anti-everything-Russian foreign-inspired-and-assisted coup in 2014, there would have been no war, and even these areas would have remained under Ukrainian administration.
But, the post-2014 Ukrainian governments have made their choices, and, if they want peace for Ukraine, they need to accept the consequences of these choices.
Not only such peace will be good for Ukraine, if will also help its European "friends" who are prodding Zelensky to continue with the war and promising him their "security guarantees", because it will enable them to save their "democracies" by ending support for the war which is bankrupting their own countries, using these savings to improve the life of their own populations, and reforming their rotten political systems to serve their own people, rather than keeping the world in endless wars and crises.