Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at their meeting at the Turkish presidential palace in Ankara on Thursday.
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Kyiv and Moscow – The hopes of substantive talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine disappeared Thursday, after days of intense speculation according to which Russian president Vladimir Putin and perhaps even President Trump assists.
Only one leader – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – introduced himself to Türkiye. He met Putin for the last time face to face in 2019. Now he accused the Russian chief of being afraid of meeting while Russia continues to attack Ukraine.
In a decision made public only the day before talks, Putin appointed a group of intermediate level technocrats to lead the Russian delegation. The Kremlin spokesperson later confirmed that Putin would not join them.
Addressing journalists in Ankara, Zelenskyy criticized Putin for sending “replacement accessories” in her place.
“We must understand the level of the Russian delegation, what is their mandate and if they are able to make decisions by themselves,” said Zelenskyy. “Because we all know who makes decisions in Russia.”
However, the head of the Russian delegation, the presidential aid Vladimir Medinsky, insisted that his team had come to Turkey informed of the Kremlin positions and with full authority to negotiate.
Russian presidential assistant Vladimir Medinsky talks to journalists from the Russian Consulate in Istanbul on Thursday.
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“The objective of direct talks with the Ukrainian party is to establish long -term peace in the long term that takes into account the roots of the conflict,” Medinsky told a fray of journalists outside the Palais de Dolmabahce in Istanbul.
There was a catch: Zelenskyy and most of the Ukrainian delegation were still in Ankara, nearly 300 miles away.
Zelenskyy later confirmed that he would send a team led by the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, in Istanbul to meet the Russian technocrats. We don’t know when discussions start. Zelenskyy himself said he went to Albania for a meeting with European leaders.
Putin called for direct talks. Zelenskyy challenges him to meet in person
Putin has offered direct talks with Ukraine in a surprise announcement to foreign journalists from Kremlin on Sunday-an apparent offering to an ultimatum by Ukraine and its Western allies to accept an immediate 30-day cease-fire by May 12 or cope with new sanctions.
Putin did not address the cease-fire proposal, but suggested that the two parties are rather meeting in Istanbul, which welcomed missed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022.
It was not clear if Putin himself had the intention of participating.
Zelenskyy is committed to attending negotiations – and put Putin to do the same.
President Trump, currently traveling in the Middle East, also said that he was open to making an appearance – swelling the hopes that the chief of the Kremlin could accept.
However, speaking of Doha, in Qatar on Thursday, Trump reversed the course. Trump said that he had never given a commitment to attend and did not think that Putin would go “if I don’t seem”.
“And it turned out to be fair,” added Trump. “But we have people there.”
Secretary of state Marco Rubio was in Antalya, Turkey, for a NATO summit, and could join the talks. Addressing journalists there, Rubio played the risk of progress in Russian-Ukraine negotiations in Türkiye. “It is my evaluation that I do not think that we are going to have a breakthrough here until the president (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this subject,” he said, “face to face”.
Trump left the door open to engage with talks on a later date “if it was appropriate”-adding that “nothing will happen until Putin and I gathered” in terms of securing a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
Zelenskyy told journalists in Ankara that he hoped that the meeting between the two delegations leads to a cease-fire which, according to him, must be assured before the peace talks could begin. He added that if the Kremlin continues to relieve the terms of ceasefire proposals, the Western allies of Ukraine should continue the threats of imposing new sanctions on Russia.
“It will be an incentive to put an end to war earlier or at least accelerate our conversations on this subject,” he said.
Hanna Palamarenko of NPR contributed to this story of Kyiv.
