Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he’d like to meet Donald Trump at the Vatican on Saturday where global leaders will attend the funeral of Pope Francis.

The Ukrainian leader’s push for a meeting with Trump comes just days after the American president warned he was ready to walk away from efforts to end the war in Ukraine if a deal can’t be reached soon. Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said his team would be ready to discuss an “unconditional ceasefire or partial ceasefire” during talks set to take place in London with Ukraine’s allies.

He also accused Moscow of trying to drag out the talks to wear down U.S. patience. Russia’s leadership would have to agree to an unconditional ceasefire before Ukraine was ready to start any negotiations with them, he said.

“I think they’re afraid of direct talks,” Zelenskyy said, referring to Russia. “Maybe they indeed are afraid that the Americans will leave the negotiations.”

The London gathering, set to take place on Wednesday, was intended as a followup to meetings in Paris last week, where the U.S. shared proposals to establish a ceasefire and peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. The U.S. is prepared to ease sanctions on Moscow and to recognize Russia’s control over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as part of a deal, Bloomberg previously reported.

The State Department said on Tuesday that State Secretary Marco Rubio wasn’t planning to attend. Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff will travel to Russia later in the week, according to the White House.

Rubio and Witkoff had been expected to meet with the foreign ministers and national security advisers of France, Germany, the U.K. and Ukraine in London, people familiar with the matter said previously, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Now, the U.S. will be represented by Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, according to State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce.

“We look forward to hearing back from him about whether or not we’ve had some success in London,” she said at a briefing Tuesday, referring to Kellogg.

Zelenskyy said on Tuesday Ukraine wouldn’t recognize Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea, which is internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to halt Moscow’s invasion across the current front during his meeting with Witkoff in St. Petersburg earlier this month, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing people it didn’t name.

Russian attacks on the battlefield have reached the intensity of those launched before Easter, according to the Ukrainian military. Zelenskyy had previously accused Russian forces of violating a 30-hour Easter Sunday truce declared by Putin.

Residential districts in the southern Ukrainian cities of Zaporizhzhia and Odesa and eastern city of Kharkiv were also hit by Russian drones and glide bombs on Tuesday, injuring more than 50 people and killing one, according to local authorities.

Zelenskyy also said that lawyers representing Ukraine and the U.S. continue to work on the bilateral agreement on natural resources, which has yet to be ratified by the Ukrainian legislature, Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian leader added that he was not aware of “any other steps on finalization” of the deal, a longstanding demand of Trump.

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