Drones to St Petersburg and letters to the Kremlin: how Zelenskyy is preparing Putin for autumn negotiations
In early June, Russia's northern capital hosted the latest iteration of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
This is an event conceived by Putin for Putin and about Putin. Every year, the Russian leader gathers officials and business leaders on his home turf to expound his vision of the world, sketch out a picture of the future he would like to see, and demonstrate that Russia is still an "influential power" – and that Putin himself is still a strong, consequential leader.
But in 2026, the conference's unlikely main participant turned out to be someone else entirely.
For many years Ukraine has had no presence at the forum whatsoever. But this year it decided to take part – albeit, as they say in such cases, with a twist.
Ukraine's representation in St Petersburg took the form of long-range Ukrainian drones, which struck energy facilities on the city's outskirts and the Russian naval base at Kronstadt.
A second blow to the forum was delivered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself. The Ukrainian leader published an open letter to Putin, timed precisely to coincide with his scheduled press conference. In this seemingly simple manner, Zelenskyy set the media framing for the Kremlin ruler's subsequent exchange with journalists – a framing Putin wasn't able to break free of.
In reality, this dual strike – by drone and by letter – was part of a bigger story. According to Ukrainska Pravda's sources in the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), the St Petersburg strikes were among the first public signals that Ukraine's summer military-diplomatic campaign had begun.
Zelenskyy has touched on its preparation in passing during meetings with MPs and parliamentary faction leaders, outlining a series of military and political steps intended to bring the Kremlin to an awareness of a simple point over the coming months: that there is no alternative to serious negotiations.
"There is no visible sign that Putin wants to move towards swift negotiations," a source in the president's team told Ukrainska Pravda. "But there are many indirect signals and hints from all the global powers that by autumn the situation may have changed in such a way that leaves him no choice. Our task now is to do everything possible to ensure that Putin has no alternative path available to him at all."
Ukrainska Pravda examines what Ukraine's new "two-pronged offensive" strategy entails, what key objectives must be met for it to succeed, and what role Kyiv assigns to Europe and the United States in this process (spoiler alert: these roles are very different).
Negotiations are dead – long live negotiations!
"We have to acknowledge the obvious: the previous negotiating process is effectively dead," a source within President Zelenskyy's diplomatic team told Ukrainska Pravda. "It has stalled and is going nowhere. Our talks with Kushner and Witkoff, which had been building up since the end of last year, have pretty much come to a halt."
Earlier this year, following the reboot of Ukraine's negotiating team and the arrival of Kyrylo Budanov and David Arakhamiia, the process had been moving along fairly steadily. The parties had worked through virtually everything within their mandates. But one step short of a leaders' meeting, the negotiations went silent.
Ukrainska Pravda's sources in the President's Office insist that Ukraine has spent the past few months trying to do everything possible to revive the talks and draw the Americans back into a more active role.
The problem is that since Donald Trump's return to office, the United States has changed its role. Where once it was an unconditional ally of Ukraine, since the beginning of last year it has sought to position itself as a facilitator of the process.
In Kyiv, this is viewed with considerable scepticism.
"We tell them: 'Friends, you can't just be messengers.' They see their role as listening to us, relaying our position to the Russians, then listening to the Russians and relaying their position back to us. But that is not how Great America can function," one of Ukrainska Pravda's sources said with frustration.
"If you've taken it upon yourself to moderate a conversation, then behave like moderators, not couriers. Project strength, set the terms of the dialogue, make the parties listen to you and to one another," the source added.
It was this stalling of the diplomatic process that compelled Ukraine to seek new ways of strengthening its own position. Now new arguments have begun to emerge.
Since the start of the year, Ukraine has been gradually seizing the initiative in certain domains of the war – primarily by increasing the volume and effectiveness of long-range strikes against Russia's defence companies, energy infrastructure, and oil and gas sector.
The second significant change was depriving the Russians of access to Starlink satellite communication technology. When Ukraine secured a monopoly on the use of Elon Musk's service at the front, this gave the Armed Forces of Ukraine a significant operational advantage.
That advantage has been compounded by the rapid scaling up of production of mid-range (30-200-km) drones which operate via Starlink and can be guided throughout the duration of their flight.
This technology is already beginning to deliver serious results and may in time become one of the main factors to change the situation on the battlefield.
Ukraine is moving step by step towards what the Ukrainian military is calling a "logistics lockdown" of Crimea: the gradual severing of military, transport and energy logistics both on the peninsula itself and along the land corridor that connects it to Russian territory.
If this plan succeeds in full, Crimea and the southern grouping of Russian forces could find themselves in a first-of-its-kind operational drone blockade – with no large-scale Ukrainian ground offensive and no major mechanised operations, but with the gradual destruction of their air defence systems, logistics, energy supply and troop support capabilities.
Ukrainska Pravda's sources in the senior leadership of the defence forces say this process is already underway.
"Wait until July – and you will see what Ukrainian might is," one of them said.
It is against this backdrop that Zelenskyy has decided to intensify the diplomatic counter-offensive as well.
Wartime correspondence
Credit where credit is due: Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a master of media strategy and holding the public's attention. He's even managed to breathe new life into the long-forgotten art of political letter-writing.
In early June, the president sent several important letters to key world capitals – Washington, Berlin and Brussels – as well as the aforementioned missive to Putin.
The idea proved unexpectedly effective, at least in terms of media engagement.
These letters serve much the same purpose as Zelenskyy's video addresses to the world did at the start of the full-scale invasion. They capture the attention of international audiences, compel all the parties involved to respond, and at the same time allow Ukraine to shape the narrative on its own terms.
The first indication that Putin could and should be subjected to media pressure came on 9 May, when Ukraine succeeded in drawing the Kremlin into a behind-the-scenes discussion over permission to hold the Victory Day parade in Moscow. Whatever decision Putin made, he was already on the losing side of the information battle.
Now the strategy is to turn that one-off tactical success into a sustained operational advantage. In other words, rather than reacting to Russian information operations, Ukraine aims to set the agenda itself and force the Kremlin into carefully prepared information traps.
Another objective behind the drone campaign and the exchange of letters has been to bring the US's attention back to Ukraine.
American diplomacy has largely shifted its focus to the Middle East and Iran in recent months. Kyiv has made little effort to conceal its frustration over this.
"They're completely tied up with Iran," a source within Zelenskyy's team told Ukrainska Pravda. "Every couple of days a deal is supposedly about to be signed and then everything falls apart again. Quite simply, they can't take their eyes off Iran long enough to focus on anything else. We're no longer their top priority. But we'd like Trump's people to at least come here and decide how we're going to move forward."
Zelenskyy himself has even joked about the oft-announced and just as often postponed visits by the US envoys.
"We are in fact in constant contact with the American side regarding our negotiators. We are waiting for the negotiating team to arrive. But in my view, we have been waiting for them for a very long time. Sadly, we are not their focus today. Iran is the number one issue for the United States of America, followed by Ukraine. Unfortunately, we are in a queue of these wars," the Ukrainian president said on 3 June.
Eventually, after waiting in vain for Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to visit Kyiv, Zelenskyy spoke to them by phone during a stopover at Chișinău airport.
"We discussed prospects in the context of the G7 Summit and other events in June. I outlined the data we have regarding what Moscow is intent on," the president said briefly about the conversation before flying on to London for talks with the leaders of the UK, France and Germany.
During the meeting of the so-called E3, and later in discussions with the Nordic-Baltic Eight, Zelenskyy told his counterparts directly that the time has come to become more actively involved and jointly increase pressure on Putin across all international platforms, including within the G7 framework – a topic Zelenskyy had, somewhat unexpectedly, also discussed with Trump's envoys Kushner and Witkoff.
Ukraine's logic is fairly straightforward: having the Americans act solely as mediators is not particularly beneficial for Kyiv – not least because Zelenskyy's team is perfectly capable of talking to the Russians itself.
This was evident during direct negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, where the Ukrainian and Russian negotiators spent several hours speaking without intermediaries.
Direct contact with Putin became apparent after the Russian leader revealed that his trusted oligarch Roman Abramovich had travelled to Ukraine and met with Zelenskyy.
It was not the billionaire's first visit to Kyiv during the full-scale war. In March 2022, he was secretly received in the Ukrainian capital and even managed to suffer what appeared to be poisoning. The incident caused Zelenskyy's team such alarm that they only relaxed once Abramovich had safely left Ukraine alive.
Ukrainska Pravda has been aware that further talks with the Russian oligarch had taken place in Ukraine but, at the request of its sources, could not report on them for fear of jeopardising this communication channel. However, after Putin himself effectively disclosed its existence, Zelenskyy described in detail both the substance of the talks and the message he had sent to the Russian leader.
One additional detail can be revealed: Zelenskyy's message also included a brief postscript from the Ukrainian negotiating team. The gist of it was that Russia's military commanders are misleading Putin about the true situation on the battlefield and they will not capture the whole of Donbas either by the end of the summer or by autumn. When he eventually realises this, the message went on, he should remember that Ukraine warned him of precisely this outcome, and it would therefore be wiser to just stop.
So far, Putin has publicly stated that he sees no point in a face-to-face meeting with Zelenskyy because there is "nothing to negotiate".
Kyiv had expected that response. Nobody in the President's Office seriously believed that Putin would agree to end the war in June or July.
Instead, the timeframe increasingly being mentioned by Ukrainian officials is October or November.
"Taking the totality of military, diplomatic and international factors into account, that is when a genuine window of opportunity for negotiations could open. Sometime before the US elections and after Russia's State Duma elections," a source in the president's diplomatic team reflected.
At that point, the aim would not necessarily be to reach a final peace agreement immediately. Rather, it would be possible to formally acknowledge the new balance of forces on the battlefield, achieve a phased cessation of hostilities, and only then move on to searching for political solutions to bring the war to a definitive end.
Until then, Ukraine has an opportunity to make the most of the coming months.
First, it must do everything possible to launch genuine integration into the EU following the opening of accession negotiating clusters.
Second, it must secure agreement on a European role in any future peace talks. Ukraine wants Europe at the negotiating table, but not as merely another "facilitator".
Speaking in Tallinn recently, Zelenskyy put it as plainly as possible: Europe cannot be a neutral mediator, because it is an ally of Ukraine.
For that reason, Kyiv's primary objective today is not to force Putin to the negotiating table tomorrow, but to use the summer to strengthen its own position.
Then, when a genuine window for major decisions opens in the autumn, Ukraine will be as strong, united and well-prepared as possible, ready to shape the agenda together with its allies rather than having it imposed upon them.
Roman Romaniuk for Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Anastasiia Yankina and Tetiana Buchkovska
Edited by Teresa Pearce