Ukraine and Russia are set to meet in Turkey for peace talks three years after initial talks in the country broke down, with US president Donald Trump suggesting he could fly in to join the negotiations.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has also announced that he will be in Istanbul for the talks, due to start on Thursday, and has called for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to meet him there.
Russia has rejected Ukraine’s repeated calls for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, insisting that its maximalist demands, which include the effective ending of Ukraine’s sovereignty, have not been addressed. But the Kremlin did announce at the start of this week that it would attend the talks in Turkey.
The return of Mr Trump to the White House has forced the two sides to the negotiating table, after more than three years of war and around a million people killed or wounded, but their differences appear still to be irreconcilable.
The person who has been most vocal about his attendance is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. He wrote on social media earlier this week that he supports Mr Trump’s calls for direct talks with Mr Putin.
“I have openly said that I am ready for a meeting. I will be in Turkey. I hope that the Russians will not avoid this meeting,” he wrote on X.
He added that he hoped Mr Trump would “be there with us – at the meeting in Turkey”. “This is the right idea,” he added. “We can change a lot.”
His comments came after Mr Trump said he saw the “potential for a good meeting” between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky. The pair have not met since 2019, when they both attended a Normandy Format summit in Paris, a few months after Mr Zelensky won the presidency.
The US president, speaking ahead of a trip to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which began on Tuesday, said that he was “thinking about flying over” to the talks during his Gulf trip.
Whether Mr Putin attends remains unclear, though it is unlikely. When pressed on possible attendees, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to say who might travel to Istanbul from the Russian side.
“Overall, we’re determined to seriously look for ways to achieve a long-term peaceful settlement. That is all,” Mr Peskov said.
The meeting comes after Mr Putin claimed he was serious about a peace deal in a surprise speech on the weekend.
But Mr Zelensky’s chief aides have suggested that the president will not sit down with lower-level Russian officials if Mr Putin does not show up. Kyiv insists that Mr Putin is the only decision maker in Moscow.
“If Vladimir Putin refuses to come to Turkey, it will be the final signal that Russia does not want to end this war, that Russia is not willing and not ready for any negotiations,” Mr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement on Tuesday.
