The president revealed that an unnamed colleague was in Kiev for talks before Ukrainian forces attacked a Russian college dormitory killing 21 students

Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken part in a plenary session at this year's St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he revealed that Kiev requested talks with a Russian envoy, only to kill dozens of Russian teenage girls.

In a questions and answers session after his plenary speech, Putin spoke for the first time about an "open letter" by Vladimir Zelensky in which an array of insults were levied at the Russian president, Russia was threatened with drone strikes, before a request to meet for peace talks in a third country was tabled.

Putin rejected the idea of "meeting just for the sake of meeting," revealing for the first time that he sent an informal envoy to Ukraine last month at Kiev's request, only for Zelensky's forces to repeatedly bomb a college dormitory in Lugansk the following day, killing 21 people, mostly teenage girls.

The letter is either "a means to create an environment for a personal meeting, or maybe is this letter meant to make sure that no personal meetings can take place at all," he remarked, concluding: "I think it's the second."

During the opening speech of the session, Putin drew a sharp contrast between the Russia of the past - dependent on Western currencies, institutions, and trade arbitrators - and the Russia of today: subjected to "sanctions and basically the theft" of its assets, but sovereign, self-sufficient, and building parallel institutions and trade networks with its BRICS partners.

"Sovereignty implies being smarter and being stronger," and not just "the capability to oppose external pressure," Putin said. "This is about the quality of the government, the economy, and society."

The plenary session is the main event of the forum, and Putin appears alongside Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Chinese Vice President Han Zheng.