Mike Baker

The letter comes at a particularly delicate moment, with both sides exchanging heavy bombardments this week, while Putin hosted the St.

Petersburg International Economic Forum, often referred to as Putin's Davos.

As we've been tracking here on the PDB, Russia has intensified its missile and drone campaign against Ukrainian cities in recent weeks.

which included one of the largest aerial assaults on Kyiv in months that killed more than 20 civilians and left more than 100 injured.

At the same time, Ukraine has increasingly demonstrated its own ability to strike deep inside Russian territory using long-range drones, including an attack on Wednesday in St.

Petersburg that set fire to an oil terminal just as Putin's flagship economic forum was getting underway.

Zelensky appears to be trying to use that moment to argue that Ukraine is not collapsing, Russia is not achieving a decisive victory, and both sides are paying a growing price for continuing the war.

He noted that more than 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded in May alone, while acknowledging that Ukraine continues to suffer painful losses as well.

As for Putin, the Russian leader did not initially reject the idea of negotiations, though by Friday he appeared to pour cold water on the prospect of a direct meeting.

Speaking to foreign media editors on the sidelines of the Economic Forum on Thursday, Putin said Russia is prepared to end the war through diplomacy if Ukraine accepts what he described as compromises previously discussed with President Trump during their summit in Anchorage last year.

Now, I don't think the word compromise means what Putin thinks it means.

As a reminder, those so-called compromises include Putin's maximalist demand that Ukraine surrender the remainder of the eastern Donbass region, territory that includes parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that Russia claims as its own, but doesn't currently occupy, despite Kiev and most Western governments rejecting those claims as an illegal land grab.

Well, yeah, I guess that's another way to call an invasion.

It's an illegal land grab.

Well, let's stick with invasion.

Putin says that if Kiev capitulates to these demands or compromises in Putin's phrasing, quote, then the conflict will quickly come to a natural conclusion.

Yeah, so all you have to do is do exactly what I'm telling you to do and I'll stop the invasion.

It's as simple as that.

Putin also painted a rosy picture of the war effort, insisting that Russian forces are advancing every day, and claimed Moscow now controls all of Luhansk, more than 85% of Donetsk, and roughly 80% of Zaporizhia.

He also said Russia would strengthen its air defenses after acknowledging that some Ukrainian drone attacks have broken through, and warned that Moscow has not yet used its Oreshnik hypersonic missile against Ukraine in full combat conditions, describing its limited use thus far as testing.