Peace breakthrough unlikely as Putin declines to meet Ukraine’s Zelensky in Turkey

ISTANBUL/ANKARA - Russia’s Vladimir Putin spurned a challenge to meet face-to-face with Volodymyr Zelensky in Turkey on May 15, instead sending a second-tier delegation to planned peace talks, while Ukraine’s president said his defence 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 US President Donald Trump who said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and the Russian leader.

US 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 May 16 in Istanbul at 10am local time (3pm in Singapore).

“We are ready to work,” Mr Medinsky said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.

He said his delegation had held “productive” talks on the evening of May 15 with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

Mr Zelensky said Mr Putin’s decision not to attend but to send what he called

a “decorative” line-up

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,” Mr Zelensky 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,” Mr Zelensky told reporters.

Mr Zelensky said he himself would also now not go to Istanbul and that his team’s mandate was to discuss a ceasefire.

A decree issued by Mr Zelensky said Ukraine’s delegation would be led by Defence 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 Mr 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 Mr Trump and Mr Putin have said for months they are keen to meet each other, but no date has been set. Mr Trump, after piling heavy pressure on Ukraine and

clashing with Mr Zelensky

in the Oval Office in February, has lately

expressed growing impatience

that Mr Putin may be “tapping me along”.

“Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Mr Rubio, speaking in the Turkish resort of Antalya, later echoed that: “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”, Mr Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul to meet with Turkey’s foreign minister and with Ukraine’s delegation on May 16.

Diplomatic confusion

The diplomatic disarray was symptomatic of the deep hostility between the warring sides and the unpredictability injected by Mr Trump, whose interventions since returning to the White House in January have often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies.

While Mr Zelensky waited in vain for Mr Putin in Ankara, the Russian negotiating team sat in Istanbul with no one to talk to on the Ukrainian side. Some 200 reporters milled around near the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus that the Russians had specified as the talks venue.

The enemies have been wrestling for months over the logistics of ceasefires and peace talks while trying to show Mr 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 Mr Putin would join talks at some future point, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “What kind of participation will be required further, at what level, it is too early to say now.”

Russia said on May 15 its forces had captured two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. A spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment in 2024 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.

The Russian delegation is headed by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister who has overseen the rewriting of history textbooks to reflect Moscow’s narrative on the war. It includes a deputy defence 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 Mr Medinsky confirmed on May 15 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 Mr 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 deep cuts to the size of Ukraine’s military.

With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Mr 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. REUTERS