EAST VILLAGE, Manhattan (WABC) -- As President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared to sit down at the negotiating table , thousands of miles away, the lunch crowd in the East Village sat down to bowls of borscht.

Diners gathered at Veselka, the temple of Ukrainian gastronomy in the East Village on Friday afternoon.

"It's just two egomaniac rulers who feel that they want to stroke their egos at this particular instance," said Jason Birchard.

Birchard, a third-generation owner, has been supporting his ancestral home from afar and can't quite believe that 10 years after Russia first invaded Ukraine, Putin is involved in so-called peace talks when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not.

"I feel like I'm living in a bad episode of the 'Twilight Zone,' nobod

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