ISTANBUL: A Russian delegation landed in Istanbul on Thursday for the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in more than three years — but without President Vladimir Putin despite many world leaders urging Russia's leader to attend. Putin was not included on a list of Moscow's negotiating team published by the Kremlin late on Wednesday, after Zelensky challenged him to turn up in person to the talks.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he did not expect progress on Ukraine until he meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who did not show up to talks with Kyiv in Turkiye. "I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together," Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates. "But we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying."
The absence of Putin — as well as any top diplomats such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov — would seem to diminish the talks' importance or any possibility of a breakthrough. Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters Moscow's team was "ready for serious work".
A Ukrainian official said that Zelensky was en route to Ankara, where he will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and only then would decide his approach to the talks. "The president starts his visit with Erdogan in Ankara and only then will the president decide on the next steps," the official said. Hundreds of journalists were gathered at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, where the talks are rumoured to be taking place, reporters saw.
Trump has been pushing for a swift end to the three-year war but has become frustrated with a lack of progress and has encouraged the two sides to open direct talks. Speaking at a Nato meeting in Antalya, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington was "impatient" for progress and willing to consider "any mechanism" to achieve a lasting end to the war. Rubio is due in Istanbul on Friday "for meetings with European counterparts to discuss the conflict in Ukraine and other regional issues of mutual concern", the US State Department said.
Zelensky had spent days urging Putin to turn up after the Russian leader himself proposed direct Russia-Ukraine talks at the weekend. Putin made the surprise call for negotiations after Kyiv and European leaders pressured him to agree to a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire. "This is his war... Therefore the negotiations should be with him," Zelensky said in one statement. Despite the flurry of diplomacy, Moscow and Kyiv's positions remain far apart and there has been little sign that either is willing to make concessions.
The Kremlin's naming of Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline aide to Putin and ex-culture minister, as its top negotiator suggests Moscow does not plan to make any concessions at the talks. Medinsky, born in Soviet Ukraine, led the failed 2022 negotiations in which Moscow called for sweeping territorial claims and restrictions on Kyiv's military. He is known for writing ultra-nationalistic books and oversees teaching material for schools on Russian history that independent historians have denounced as a manipulation of facts. Russia's other three negotiators were named as Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin and Igor Kostyukov, director of Russia's GRU military intelligence agency.
Türkiye's top diplomat said on Thursday said there was cause for hope ahead of Istanbul talks between Russian and Ukrainian mediators in what would be their first direct talks in over three years. "If the parties' positions are harmonised and trust is established, a very important step towards peace will have been taken," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a Nato meeting in the southern Turkish city of Antalya. — AFP
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