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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sent a delegation to Istanbul for peace talks with Russia, paving the way for the first direct negotiations between the two countries since March 2022 – although Washington has warned that no breakthrough is likely unless Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin agree to meet.
The talks are set to begin on Friday and Zelenskyy said that Kyiv would focus on pushing for an immediate 30-day ceasefire.
Speaking at a press conference in the Turkish capital, Ankara, after a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Zelenskyy said he had decided to dispatch a delegation even though Russia had sent a lower-level team, in order to signal to Trump that Ukraine remains firmly committed to seeking an end to the war.
“Unfortunately, [the Russians] are not serious enough about the negotiations … Out of respect for President Trump and Erdoğan, I have decided to send our delegation to Istanbul now,” Zelenskyy said, adding that the delegation would be headed by his defence minister, Rustem Umerov.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, are expected to be in Istanbul on Friday, though it remains unclear what role they will play.
The talks will take place at the Dolmabahçe Palace, the grand residence on the European shore of the Bosphorus that hosted a fruitless round of negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in 2022.
The much-anticipated day on Thursday descended into disarray early on with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations arriving in separate cities hundreds of miles apart, casting immediate doubt over whether they would meet at all.
On Wednesday evening the Kremlin had announced that Putin would skip the talks, rejecting Zelenskyy’s bold proposal for a face-to-face meeting to discuss peace.
Looming over it all was Trump, who raised doubts over the value of any talks that did not involve him and the Russian president. “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he told reporters onboard Air Force One.
Echoing Trump, Rubio told reporters late on Thursday: “I think it’s abundantly clear that the only way we’re going to have a breakthrough here is between President Trump and President Putin.” He said any meeting between the two would depend on progress this week.
The remarks will dampen hopes in Kyiv and among its European allies that Trump is prepared to impose tough sanctions if the current talks collapse before he gets the chance to meet Putin – in effect leaving Moscow with little incentive to compromise in Turkey.
Speaking during a stop in Qatar on Thursday before heading to the UAE, Trump suggested he might still travel to Turkey on Friday “if something happened” at the talks. But by nightfall there was little sign that any last-minute summit involving the US president was in the works.
Zelenskyy and Putin have each been manoeuvring to position themselves favourably in front of Trump, who has grown increasingly impatient with the slow pace of the talks, with each leader casting the other as the main obstacle to progress.
Zelenskyy said: “I believe the most important thing for Ukraine is to remain constructive and reasonable. That’s why we’re sending a delegation led by the defence ministry – so that no one can claim Ukraine is responsible for derailing the talks.”
Zelenskyy had travelled to Ankara with a team of his closest aides on Thursday, while Russia’s mid-level delegation, led by Vladimir Medinsky, an ultra-conservative, landed earlier in the day in Istanbul, where hundreds of journalists camped out for hours awaiting without success the start of the talks.
Throughout the conference in Ankara, Zelenskyy sought to frame Russia’s choice of delegation as a sign to Trump that Moscow was not approaching the talks in good faith. He told reporters that the Russian delegation that arrived in Istanbul did not include “anyone who actually makes decisions”, accusing Moscow of not making efforts to end the war seriously.
“I feel disrespected by Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation – this is a personal disrespect … [to] Erdoğan, to Trump,” Zelenskyy said. “We can’t be running around the world looking for Putin,” he added when asked whether the Russian president was avoiding a direct meeting with him.
But there is little evidence so far that Trump is receptive to Zelenskyy’s plea, with the US leader on Thursday refusing to criticise the Russian delegation.
Any hopes of a serious breakthrough appear to have been dashed by Putin’s decision not to send his two most senior diplomats, Yuri Ushakov and Sergei Lavrov, and instead delegate the talks to lower-ranking aides.
Observers say that by appointing Medinsky, a former culture minister, to lead the delegation, Putin is signalling he has little interest in genuine compromise and remains committed to the same objectives he pursued in 2022: stripping Ukraine of its sovereignty and military capability.
Medinsky, who also led the failed peace talks in March 2022, held a hastily arranged press conference at the Russian consulate in Istanbul. He described the current negotiations as a continuation of those earlier talks, which included sweeping demands such as limiting Ukraine’s armed forces and blocking it from rebuilding with western support. Kyiv has repeatedly rejected those terms as unacceptable.
Medinsky also echoed a well-worn Kremlin talking point, saying Russia aimed to address the “root causes” of the war – a phrase frequently used by Putin to justify the invasion.
Boris Bondarev, a former senior Russian diplomat who resigned after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine, said: “Putin clearly doesn’t want any genuine peace talks, nor any ceasefire, unless it’s entirely on his terms.”
Bondarev said Putin had proposed the talks in Turkey with the aim of convincing Trump he was committed to peace, while he remained intent on continuing the fighting on the ground.
With Russian forces making slow but steady progress on the battlefield, Putin – seemingly confident that Russia can outlast Ukraine – is refusing to halt the fighting before securing major concessions from Kyiv and the west.
Even before Moscow and Kyiv meet in Istanbul, Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s European allies were urging the US to impose new sanctions if the sides fail to agree on a ceasefire.
“If there is no ceasefire, no bilateral meetings, we are asking for sanctions to end the war more quickly,” Zelenskyy said. “We want a strong package of sanctions against Russia from the US, European countries – there must be pressure from the global south.
“Trump’s position is to put pressure on both sides. I believe that we were put under more pressure,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine had “step by step demonstrated a willingness for negotiations”.
He said: “You have to pressurise the side that does not want to end the war.”
