President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to host and help mediate negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevhen Korniychuk said, CNN reports.

"Our president believes Israel is the only democratic state that has great relations with both Russia and Ukraine and that could be used in order to facilitate those negotiations," Korniychuk told CNN Friday night.

Korniychuk said that Jerusalem is preferable to Minsk where previous talks took place because Belarus is a close ally of Russia, and Ukraine does not "believe in the legitimacy" of Belarus' current leader Alexander Lukashenko.