President Volodymyr Zelensky will only attend talks on Ukraine if Russia’s Vladimir Putin is also there, the Ukrainian leader’s top aide said, challenging the Kremlin to show it is genuine about seeking peace.
US President Donald Trump has offered to attend Thursday’s proposed meeting in Istanbul, which has become the focus of his attempts to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Mr Putin has yet to say if he will take part. Both Russia and Ukraine have sought to show they are working towards peace after Mr Trump prioritised ending the war, but they have yet to agree any clear path.
On Sunday, the Russian leader proposed direct talks with Ukraine after ignoring a Ukrainian proposal for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
Mr Trump then publicly told Mr Zelensky to accept. “President Zelensky will not meet with any other Russian representative in Istanbul, except Mr Putin,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters.
Mr Zelensky’s trip to Turkey showed Kyiv was ready for talks, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak said, but repeated Ukraine’s stance that any negotiations must come after a ceasefire.
“Our position is very principled and very strong,” Mr Yermak said during a visit to Copenhagen.
Russia has not said if Mr Putin will travel to Turkey.
“We are committed to a serious search for ways of a long-term peaceful settlement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday but would not comment further on the talks.
Mr Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
Most of Europe has rallied around Kyiv providing arms and financial aid, while Russia has turned to Iran and North Korea for support.
Mr Trump has demanded the two nations end the war, threatening to walk away from efforts to broker a peace deal unless there are clear signs of progress soon.
Trump goes to Turkey?
If Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, who make no secret of their mutual contempt, were to meet on Thursday it would be their first face-to-face meeting since December 2019.
Mr Trump, who is due to visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar this week, unexpectedly offered yesterday to travel to Istanbul, which straddles the divide between Europe and Asia.
“I was thinking about actually flying over there. There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen, but we’ve got to get it done,” Mr Trump said before leaving for his second foreign trip since returning to the White House in January.
“Don’t underestimate Thursday in Turkey,” he added.
Following the offer, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the “way forward for a ceasefire” in Ukraine with his Ukrainian, British, French, Polish, German and EU counterparts. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, held talks with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.
Far apart
Reuters reported last year that Mr Putin was open to discussing a ceasefire with Mr Trump, but that Moscow ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.
Ukraine has said it is ready for talks, but a ceasefire is needed first, a position supported by its European allies. Kyiv wants robust security guarantees as part of any peace deal and rejects a Russian proposal for restrictions on the size of its military.
Territorial issues could be discussed once a ceasefire is in place, it says. Mr Putin has repeatedly referred to a 2022 deal which Russia and Ukraine negotiated shortly after the Russian invasion but never finalised.
Under the draft agreement, a copy of which Reuters has reviewed, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent UN Security Council members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.
Ukraine and its European allies have told Russia that it would have to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from yesterday or face new sanctions. The Kremlin replied, saying it would not respond to ultimatums.
France said yesterday European leaders, who met in Ukraine over the weekend, had asked the European Commission to put together new “massive” sanctions targeting Russia’s oil and financial sector if Russia failed to agree a ceasefire.
Russia’s forces control just under a fifth of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, almost all of Luhansk, and more than 70% of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, according to Russian estimates.
It also controls a sliver of the Kharkiv region. Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, told the Izvestia media outlet in remarks published today that the talks between Moscow and Kyiv can move further than the 2022 negotiations.
“If the Ukrainian delegation shows up at these talks with a mandate to abandon any ultimatums and look for common ground, I am sure that we could move forward,” he said.
