Peace breakthrough unlikely as Putin declines to meet Zelenskyy in Turkey
Russia's Vladimir Putin spurned a challenge to meet face-to-face with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkey on Thursday, instead sending a second-tier delegation to planned peace talks, while Ukraine's president said his defense minister would head up Kyiv's team.
They will be the first direct talks between the sides since March 2022, but hopes of a major breakthrough were further dented by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Putin.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later echoed that view, telling reporters in the Turkish resort of Antalya that Washington "didn't have high expectations" for the Ukraine talks in Istanbul.
The head of the Russian delegation, presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, said he expected Ukraine's representatives to turn up for the beginning of discussions on Friday in Istanbul at 10 a.m. local time.
"We are ready to work," Medinsky said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app. He said his delegation had held "productive" talks on Thursday evening with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
Zelenskyy said Putin's decision not to attend but to send what he called a "decorative" lineup showed the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war. Russia accused Ukraine of trying "to put on a show" around the talks.
"We can't be running around the world looking for Putin," Zelenskyy said after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.
"I feel disrespect from Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation — this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump," Zelenskyy told reporters.
Erdogan meets with Zelenskyy in Ankara on Thursday. |
Turkish Presidential Press Office / via REUTERS
Zelenskyy said he would also not go to Istanbul and that his team's mandate was to discuss a ceasefire.
A decree issued by Zelenskyy said Ukraine's delegation would be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and include the deputy heads of its intelligence services, the deputy chief of the military's general staff and the deputy foreign minister.
Ukraine backs an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire but Putin has said he first wants to start talks at which the details of such a truce could be discussed. More than three years after its full-scale invasion, Russia has the advantage on the battlefield and says Ukraine could use a pause in the war to call up extra troops and acquire more Western weapons.
Both Trump and Putin have said for months they are keen to meet each other, but no date has been set. Trump, after piling heavy pressure on Ukraine and clashing with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, has lately expressed growing impatience that Putin may be "tapping me along."
"Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Rubio, speaking in Antalya, later echoed that thought: "It's my assessment that I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until the President (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic."
Referring to the current state of the talks as a "logjam," Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul to meet with Turkey's foreign minister and Ukraine's delegation on Friday.
The diplomatic disarray was symptomatic of the hostility between the sides and the unpredictability injected by Trump, whose interventions since returning to the White House in January have often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies.
While Zelenskyy waited in vain for Putin in Ankara, the Russian negotiators had no one to talk to on the Ukrainian side. Some 200 reporters milled around near the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus Strait that the Russians had specified as the venue.
Ceasefire and peace talks
The enemies have been wrestling for months over the logistics of ceasefires and peace talks while trying to show Trump they are serious about trying to end what he calls "this stupid war."
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded on both sides in the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II. Washington has threatened repeatedly to abandon its mediation efforts unless there is clear progress.
Asked if Putin would join talks at some future point, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: "What kind of participation will be required further, at what level, it is too early to say now."
Russia said on Thursday its forces had captured two more settlements in Ukraine's Donetsk region. A spokesperson for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment last year that Ukraine was "getting smaller" in the absence of an agreement to stop fighting.
First talks for three years
Once they start, the talks will have to address a chasm between the two sides over a host of issues.
Russian delegation head Medinsky is a former culture minister who has overseen the rewriting of history textbooks to reflect Moscow's narrative on the war. It includes a deputy defense minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence.
Key members of the team, including its leader, were also involved in the last direct peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022 — and Medinsky confirmed on Thursday that Russia saw the new talks as a resumption of those interrupted three years ago.
"The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is sooner or later to achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict," said Medinsky.
The terms under discussion in 2022, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia's initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine's military.
With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.
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