Zelensky sends team for Ukraine’s first peace talks with Russia in three years

Donald Trump says he doesn’t expect any progress on Ukraine until he meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who declined to travel to Turkey for talks with Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met the Turkish president after arriving in Ankara, Turkey. Picture: Adem Altan / AFP

Donald Trump has said he doesn’t expect any progress on Ukraine until he meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who declined to travel to Turkey for direct talks with Volodymyr Zelensky.

“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 Ukrainian President has authorised the first direct peace talks with Russia in three years, aiming to persuade President Trump that he was sparing no effort to end the war.

Putin, who launched the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and suggested Turkey as a venue for peace negotiations on Thursday, sent a low-level delegation to Istanbul instead.

Trump, who is touring the Persian Gulf and initially held out the prospect of joining the talks, abandoned the idea after learning about Putin’s decision to stay away. The US, officials say, is sending to Istanbul a senior delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy for Russia and the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.

At a press conference after his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, Zelensky expressed frustration that the Trump administration was putting pressure only on Kyiv while abstaining from tightening the screws on Moscow.

Still, he said that he was dispatching a team led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov to Istanbul as a sign of respect for Trump and for Erdogan, even as he continued to doubt that Russia actually seeks peace. “We want to try making at least the first steps towards a ceasefire,” Zelensky said. “Nobody from the Ukrainian side will break even the tiniest shred of opportunity. We will be constructive and we will be present.”

The diplomatic manoeuvring in Turkey reflects attempts by both Russia and Ukraine to persuade the Trump administration that they are interested in a peaceful solution — but without compromising on their own core positions.

In March, days after a turbulent meeting that resulted in Zelensky’s ejection from the White House, the Ukrainian leader accepted Trump’s call for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire to facilitate more substantive talks on ending the war. Reaching that ceasefire will be the foremost priority of the Ukrainian team in Istanbul, Zelensky said,

Unlike Zelensky, Putin declined to heed Trump’s ceasefire request. Instead, he sent to Istanbul the same officials who represented him in the abortive negotiations of March 2022 that essentially sought Ukraine’s surrender. The Russian team, which arrived in Istanbul Thursday morning and spent much of the day by itself, is led by the same official who represented Moscow at the 2022 negotiations, former Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky. Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister, was a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team at the time.

Medinsky said in Istanbul that his team had received full authority from Putin and Russia’s top leadership, and sees its mission as the continuation of the 2022 talks. “The delegation has a constructive attitude, and is looking for possible solutions and points of convergence,” he said. The ultimate goal, he added, is to reach a full-fledged peace agreement that eliminates the “root causes” of the conflict. Russian officials usually use the “root causes” term to describe Ukraine’s aspirations for a foreign and defence policy independent from Moscow.

Trump hinted Wednesday that he might come to Turkey if Putin also attended. But the Russian leader, who kept the option open for days, announced hours later that he wouldn’t come and further that he wouldn’t send to Istanbul a cabinet minister or a senior member of the team that had met with US officials in recent months.

Turkish personnel stood guard ahead of a potential meeting between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul. Picture: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

“President Zelensky is here in Turkey, ready to talk peace, whereas Vladimir Putin sent a low-level delegation just to play for time,” said Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, who was attending a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation foreign-ministers meeting in the Turkish city of Antalya. “We hope that he president of the United States sees this mockery for what it is and draws the right conclusion.”

Zelensky dismissed the level of the Russian delegation as that of “theatre props,” and described it as a show of disrespect not just for Ukraine but also for the US and Turkey.

Asked whether he was disappointed by the composition of the Russian delegation, Trump said, “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together.”

The 2022 Istanbul draft agreements, which Russia wants to use as the basis for current talks, were discussed at a time when Russian tanks were deployed on the Kyiv ring road. The drafts, never endorsed by Zelensky and abandoned after the discovery of Russian-committed massacres in the town of Bucha, called for a deep cut in the size of Ukrainian armed forces, restrictions on Ukrainian weaponry and other limits on Ukrainian sovereignty.

All of that is unacceptable for Ukraine and its European allies, which intend to continue supplying weapons to Kyiv and hardening the Ukrainian army so it would be able to defend the country against renewed Russian attacks. Ukraine controls much bigger territory and has much more potent weapons — including those that can strike deep into Russian territory — than in March 2022.

The leaders of France, Poland, Germany and the UK visited Zelensky last week in Kyiv, calling on Putin to agree to an unconditional ceasefire and pledging ramped-up sanctions against Russia if he failed to do so. Trump has also discussed the possibility of secondary sanctions that would strangle Russia’s oil exports — the country’s main source of income — if Putin refused to engage in the peace process. It was unclear whether the White House, which so far focused on wooing rather than threatening Putin, would in the end agree to such punitive measures.

Zelensky, in Ankara, once again called for tougher sanctions on Russia if the peace talks didn’t result in a ceasefire. “If there is no political will,” he said, “Russia won’t sense that it must end this war.”

Wall Street Journal