Putin proposes direct peace talks but quiet on 30-day ceasefire

PARIS – Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 11 proposed direct talks with Ukraine on May 15 in Turkey that he said should be aimed at bringing a durable peace, an initiative welcomed by US President Donald Trump.

Mr Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a war that has left hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead and triggering the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Russian leader, who has offered few concessions towards ending the conflict so far, said the talks in the Turkish city of Istanbul would be aimed at eliminating the root causes of the war and restoring a “long-term, lasting peace” rather than simply a pause for rearmament.

“We are proposing that Kyiv resume direct negotiations without any preconditions,” Mr Putin said from the Kremlin in the early hours of May 11, adding that Moscow had already offered the Kyiv authorities the opportunity to resume negotiations on May 15 in Istanbul.

Mr Putin said that he would speak to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan later on May 11 about facilitating the talks, which he said could lead to a ceasefire.

“Our proposal, as they say, is on the table. The decision is now up to the Ukrainian authorities and their curators, who are guided, it seems, by their personal political ambitions and not by the interests of their peoples,” Mr Putin said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office and Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment on the proposal.

In a message on social media network Truth Social, Mr Trump hailed Mr Putin’s proposal as a positive for ending the war.

“A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!” Mr Trump said. “Think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved as this never-ending ‘bloodbath’ hopefully comes to an end.”

But French President Emmanuel Macron, who hours earlier had met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Kyiv in a symbolic show of support for Ukraine, warned that Mr Putin was merely trying “to buy time”.

“An unconditional ceasefire is not preceded by negotiations, by definition,” Mr Macron told reporters as he stepped off a train in the Polish city of Przemysl on his return from Ukraine.

‘Sustainable’ peace

Mr Putin’s proposal for direct talks with Ukraine came hours after major European powers demanded in Kyiv that he agree to

an unconditional 30-day ceasefire

or face “massive” new sanctions.

Mr Putin dismissed what he said was the attempt by some European powers to lay down “ultimatums”.

Russia, Mr Putin said, had proposed several ceasefires, including a moratorium on striking energy facilities, an Easter ceasefire and, most recently, the 72-hour truce during the celebrations marking 80 years since victory in World War II.

Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of violating the temporary truce proposals, including the May 8-10 ceasefire.

Despite Mr Putin’s call for peace talks, Russia on May 11 launched a drone attack on Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, injuring one person in the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital and damaging several private homes, Ukrainian officials said.

Mr Putin said he did not rule out that during his proposed talks in Turkey, both sides would agree on “some new truces, a new ceasefire”, but one that would be the first step towards a “sustainable” peace.

Mr Putin, whose forces have advanced over the past year, has stood firm in his conditions for ending the war.

In June 2024, he said that Ukraine must officially drop its Nato ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia.

Russian officials have also proposed that the US recognise Russia’s control over about one-fifth of Ukraine and demanded that Ukraine remains neutral, although Moscow has said it is not opposed to Kyiv’s ambitions to join the European Union.

Mr Putin specifically mentioned the 2022 draft deal that Russia and Ukraine negotiated shortly after the Russian invasion started.

Under that draft, a copy of which Reuters has seen, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

“It was not Russia that broke off negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv,” Mr Putin said. “Russia is ready to negotiate without any preconditions.”

He thanked China, Brazil, African and Middle Eastern countries and the US for their efforts to mediate.

Mr Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the Ukraine war, which his administration casts as a proxy war between the US and Russia.

Former US president Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.

Mr Putin casts the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging Nato and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, which includes Ukraine. REUTERS, AFP