Vladimir Putin will not travel to Istanbul for talks with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Kremlin has said, rejecting the Ukrainian president’s bold proposal for a face-to-face meeting in Turkey to discuss peace.
In a statement late on Wednesday, the Kremlin said its delegation would be led by Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline Putin aide who led the only previous round of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
Shortly after the Kremlin’s announcement, a US official said Donald Trump would also skip the talks. Trump had previously suggested he would travel to Turkey only if Putin were present.
Later on Wednesday, a Russian missile attack on an industrial site near the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed three people, regional governor Oleh Hryhorov said. A Russian missile attack on the city on Palm Sunday killed 35 people.
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Medinsky, the ultraconservative former Russian culture minister, will be joined in Istanbul by deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin, deputy foreign minister Mikhail Galuzin and Igor Kostyukov, the head of Russia’s military intelligence agency.
Russia’s decision to appoint Medinsky to lead the talks suggests it aims to revive negotiations along the lines of the fruitless 2022 Istanbul round, which included demands such as limiting Ukraine’s military and blocking it from rebuilding with Western support – terms Kyiv has rejected as unacceptable.
Notably, the Kremlin is not sending its two most senior diplomats, Yuri Ushakov and Sergey Lavrov, both of whom have previously taken part in multiple high-level talks with the United States in Saudi Arabia.
Pressure had built on Putin to attend the talks since Zelenskiy and then Trump called on him to travel to Istanbul to discuss a potential peace deal.
Zelenskiy challenged Putin to a personal meeting in Turkey after the Russian leader used an unexpected late-night Kremlin address to call for direct Russia-Ukraine negotiations in Istanbul.
Much is still unclear about Thursday’s talks, which are taking on growing importance amid escalating rhetoric and strategic posturing by Russia and by Ukraine.
Zelenskiy was en route to Ankara on Wednesday evening, where he was scheduled to meet Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Thursday, his aides said.
The Ukrainian leader said he would be ready to fly to Istanbul at a moment’s notice if the Russian leader showed up. “If Putin does not arrive, and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war,” he said on Tuesday.
Adding to the diplomatic intrigue, US envoy Steve Witkoff said he and secretary of state Marco Rubio would travel to Istanbul on Friday, one day after the talks were scheduled to begin. That could allow time for Trump to conclude his visit to the United Arab Emirates before joining the talks, although the US president has only said that travelling there was “a possibility”.
Trump has publicly urged Zelenskiy to accept the offer of negotiations and said he hoped Putin would attend.
Trump on Wednesday said he did not know if Putin would be in Turkey, but there was a “possibility” he would divert to the country if the Russian president was there. “He’d like me to be there, and that’s a possibility … I don’t know that he would be there if I’m not there. We’re going to find out,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One en route to Qatar.
Trump, however, noted that he was scheduled to be in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, on the third and final leg of his Gulf tour. But, when asked about visiting Turkey, he added: “That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it to save a lot of lives.”
The US president said he would send the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the senior envoys, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, to Turkey.
Brazil and China, which have warm ties with Moscow, also backed talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Speaking at a press conference in Beijing, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said he would push Putin to take part in the talks with Zelenskiy. “I’ll try to talk to Putin,” Lula said, adding that he planned to travel to Moscow. “It costs me nothing to say: ‘Hey, comrade Putin, go to Istanbul and negotiate, dammit’.”
Brazil and China had issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling for direct negotiations as the “only way to end the conflict”.
Putin and Zelenskiy have met only once, in 2019, and Moscow has repeatedly portrayed the Ukrainian leader as illegitimate.
In Istanbul, Ukraine is expected to call for a full 30-day ceasefire as a starting point for further talks.
Moscow has consistently rejected extended ceasefire proposals, arguing these would give Ukraine time to rearm and regroup at a moment when Russian forces are advancing on the battlefield.
Russian officials have indicated they will press for maximalist demands in Istanbul, similar to those made during the failed round of talks in Turkey in spring 2022.
European leaders have promised to increase pressure on Russia if the talks in Turkey failed, but the key question remains whether they can bring Trump on board with their efforts to tighten the screws on Moscow. - The Guardian
