‘Not a good idea’: Ukrainians reject UN chief’s planned meeting with Putin

“All peace talks are good when they end with the result. I really doubt that these peace talks organized by the United Nations Secretary-General would produce any result,” Zhovkva said.

Zhovkva continued to call for reforms within the UN, accusing the intergovernmental organization of “lagging behind in Ukraine in terms of humanitarian assistance to my country”.

“Therefore, it would be good if the UN Secretary-General would also focus on these things,” Zhovkva said.

In an interview broadcast on Sunday, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said to CBS’s “Face the Nation.” that he was “not sure” whether Guterres’ trip signaled any diplomatic breakthrough with Russia.

“So many leaders of countries in the civilized world, international organizations have tried to conduct these negotiations. But it seems that the Russian Federation and Putin are not interested in these negotiations,” Shmyhal said.

“They are interested in other things,” Shmyhal continued. “They are interested in the genocide of the Ukrainians. You are interested in the creation of migration crises in Europe and in the world. They are interested in the emergence of food crises, energy crises. So they’re doing those very things, and we don’t know it. … I am not sure that they are capable of conducting these negotiations in an appropriate manner.”

Ahead of his visit to Russia on Tuesday, Guterres will travel to Turkey on Monday to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Guterres will then have a working meeting and lunch with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Russia and will be received by Putin, a UN statement said.

Guterres is scheduled to travel to Ukraine on Thursday to hold a working meeting with Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and to be received by Zelensky. Guterres is also scheduled to meet with UN officials “to discuss expanding humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine.”

Guterres’ trip to Ukraine will come after Oleksii Reznikov, the country’s defense minister, wrote a scathing op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which was released last Thursday and accused the United Nations of being “an enabler of Russian war crimes”.

Zelenskyy has also sharply criticized the UN during the Russian invasion. Speaking before the Security Council earlier this month, he demanded that the UN’s central body should punish Russia and limit its influence over the organization — or disband entirely and admit it is powerless to stop Putin’s bloody war.

Days later, the UN General Assembly voted to expel Russia from the Human Rights Council over allegations of war crimes. US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield led the campaign to strip Russia of its seat.