Putin invites Zelensky for peace talks in Moscow during Beijing press conference

Vladimir Putin has held a press conference in Beijing in which he answered questions from reporters on a range of subjects including a potential Ukrainian peace deal, as his four-day visit to China came to an end on Wednesday evening.

Putin travelled to China to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the city of Tianjin on Sunday and Monday, before holding a number of bilateral meetings with world leaders and attending a giant military parade in Beijing marking 80 years since the end of World War II in Asia.

Putin told journalists that he had not discussed potential land swaps with Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees for Kyiv with US President Donald Trump when they met for a summit in Alaska last month.

“We are not fighting for territory. We’re fighting for the right of people … to speak their own language. Territory and security guarantees … did not come up at the meeting in Anchorage,” Putin said.

Putin went on to say that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was welcome to come to Moscow for talks. “If common sense prevails, we can negotiate an end to the conflict. Let’s see how the situation develops. If not, we will have to resolve all our issues by military means,” he said.

Addressing media reports that he had discussed extending average human life expectancy to 150 years with Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Putin said that modern medicine had given “humanity hope that life expectancy will increase significantly”, adding that this would have “social, political, and economic consequences, that must be taken into consideration”.

Asked about the strained ties between Russia and Azerbaijan, Putin said that there were “always issues in relations between countries”, but added that he believed that any tensions between the two nominal allies could be rectified by “the profound relationship between Azerbaijan and Russia and mutual interest”.

Responding to Putin’s invitation shortly afterwards, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha described it as “deliberately unacceptable” and said that Zelensky would not be taking him up on his offer, Russian news agency TASS reported.