On June 19, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy agreed to pursue a proposal from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva aimed at advancing diplomatic efforts to end the war with Russia, a presidential adviser in Kyiv said.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Evian-les-Bains on Wednesday. During that meeting, Zelenskiy pressed allied governments to increase pressure on Russia as part of efforts to bring a close to the conflict that has now lasted more than four years.
According to presidential communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn, the discussions focused on ways to reactivate diplomacy. Lula laid out several proposals, among them renewed contacts with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, Lytvyn told reporters.
"They agreed that, in particular, based on such ideas and contacts, they would try to achieve something and later they would discuss it based on the results," Lytvyn said.
The five permanent Security Council members include the United States, France and Britain - with whom Ukraine maintains close diplomatic contact - and also Russia and China.
Diplomatic context
Earlier this year, a U.S.-backed mediation effort stalled after Russia insisted on further territorial concessions from Ukraine, a demand Kyiv firmly rejected. President Zelenskiy has since urged U.S. President Donald Trump to return to mediation efforts and to broker a direct meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, although Putin has so far ruled out meeting face-to-face.
Following the G7 meeting in Brazil, Lula said that in the past Zelenskiy had not shown interest in his diplomatic initiatives, but that the Ukrainian leader had now accepted them. Lula also said he had already spoken with the leaders of all five permanent members of the Security Council and planned to renew those contacts.
Kyiv has recently stepped up efforts to reinvigorate diplomacy to end the war as prior U.S.-brokered talks became stalled amid the Iran war. The accepted proposal centers on using high-level diplomatic contacts to explore possible pathways forward, with Lula positioning himself to raise the matter directly with other Security Council capitals.
The leaders agreed to assess progress from the proposed contacts and to reconvene discussions based on outcomes of those efforts, according to the Ukrainian adviser. Beyond those public statements, details about specific next steps or timelines were not provided.