US President Donald Trump has pushed for the meeting as the next step toward settling the Ukraine conflict

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said that it is "obvious" that a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky will not take place.

US President Donald Trump has pushed for the meeting, following a summit with Putin in Alaska earlier this month, arguing that it should be the next step towards peace. While Moscow has said it is open to talks with Zelensky, it has stipulated that tangible progress in negotiations be made first.

"There will obviously not be a meeting between President Zelensky and President Putin," Merz told journalists ahead of a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Bresancon, France on Thursday.

This is "unlike what was agreed upon between President Trump and President Putin last week when we were in Washington," he added.

Merz joined Zelensky alongside Kiev's key European NATO backers for talks with Trump in the White House just days after the US president's historic summit with Putin. Trump reportedly called his Russian counterpart in the middle of the meeting.

Both Kiev and its Western European backers have since increasingly pushed for "security guarantees" for Ukraine.

Trump hasruled outallowing Ukraine into NATO and has stressed that he will not deploy US troops in the country in the event of a ceasefire. Washington could however, support Western European nations in doing so, as "they are willing to put people on the ground," Trump has said.

"Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees," the US president said on Monday, explaining that Washington would take a supporting role.

Moscow has stressed that it will never accept NATO troops in Ukraine, whether under the guise of peacekeepers or otherwise, and warned that such a deployment would risk a direct clash between Russia and the West. Moscow has long characterized the conflict as a proxy war by the US-led military bloc against Russia.

Kiev is not interested in peace, but rather focused on forming anti-Russian military alliances to preserve its "neo-Nazi, Russophobic regime," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovsaidlast week.

(RT.com)