Peace talks are being held in Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday that will involve Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish delegations. Photo / Getty Images
Peace talks are being held in Istanbul, Turkey, on Saturday that will involve Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish delegations. Photo / Getty Images
Ukraine and Russia plan to hold their first direct peace talks in over three years in Istanbul on Friday.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not attend, as Vladimir Putin declined face-to-face negotiations.
Zelenskyy’s team aims to discuss an unconditional ceasefire, but Russia has repeatedly rejected this proposal.
Ukraine and Russia plan to hold their first direct peace talks in more than three years when officials meet in Istanbul on Saturday.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had travelled to Turkey but said he would not attend the talks, after his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin declined his calls for face-to-face negotiations.
Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022 and Moscow’s army controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
A three-way meeting between Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish delegations is set for 9.30am (NZT), a source in the Turkish foreign ministry said Friday.
The direct peace talks between Ukraine and Russia will be the first in more than three years. Photo / Getty Images
Before that, there will be separate talks between Ukraine, the United States and Turkey that will get under way at 7.45am.
Putin last weekend proposed the talks for Thursday, but then the Kremlin spent several days refusing to say who would go or provide any details.
The Russian team arrived in Istanbul on Thursday, while Zelenskyy sent the Ukrainian delegation from Ankara Friday morning after he held talks there with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Who is expected to attend?
The Russian side is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline aide to Putin and ex-culture minister who was involved in the 2022 negotiations.
The Kremlin named three other negotiators – Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin, and Igor Kostyukov, director of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.
Zelenskyy on Thursday criticised the level of Russia’s representatives and said it was a sign Moscow was not “serious” about negotiating an end to the war.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy won't attend the Istanbul negotiations after his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin declined face-to-face negotiations. Photo / Getty Images
Top diplomats such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov – involved in previous talks with the US – are not in Istanbul. Because Putin is not joining, Zelenskyy said he also will not attend the talks.
The Ukraine delegation will be led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who has Crimean roots and was involved in several rounds of diplomacy involving Moscow, including the 2022 talks, prisoner exchanges, and the 2022 Black Sea grain deal.
He will be joined by about a dozen deputy ministers and military officials, including Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, Deputy Security Service Head Oleksandr Poklad, and Deputy Chief of General Staff Oleksiy Shevchenko.
A lower-level US official – Director for Policy Planning Michael Anton – will hold working-level talks with the Russia delegation, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
Where do the two parties stand?
Zelenskyy said his team had a mandate to discuss an unconditional ceasefire that Kyiv, its allies, and the US have been pushing for. Russia has repeatedly rejected the proposal, insisting a whole range of questions had to be settled before a ceasefire could be agreed.
Beyond that, the fundamental differences between Kyiv and Moscow are far from being resolved. Russia insists the talks address what it calls the “root causes” of the conflict, including the “denazification” and demilitarisation of Ukraine, two vague terms Moscow has used to justify the invasion.
Donald Trump said he was “p***ed off” with Vladimir Putin and threatened to ramp up sanctions on Russia as Ukraine ceasefire talks stalled. Photos / Getty Images
It has also repeated that Ukraine must cede its territory occupied by Russian troops. Kyiv said it will not recognise its territories as Russian – though Zelenskyy has acknowledged that Ukraine might only get them back through diplomatic means.
US President Donald Trump appeared to concede that progress in Turkey was unlikely, saying there would be no movement towards ending the war until he met Putin.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has no “high expectations” for the talks. Photo / AFP
Rubio also said he has no “high expectations” for the talks. Moscow’s top negotiator insisted he was ready to discuss “possible compromises” at the talks. “Unfortunately, they are not taking the real negotiations very seriously,” Zelenskyy told reporters after a meeting with Erdogan.
Turkey will host direct peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul on Saturday. Photo / Getty Images
Representatives from Moscow and Kyiv discussed an outline to end the war in Istanbul in March 2022. But those talks broke down after Russia’s retreat from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were found dead following a month-long occupation by Russian forces.
Moscow regards these talks as a “continuation” of those failed negotiations, Medinsky said Thursday. Contact between the warring sides has been limited since and mainly dedicated to humanitarian issues such as prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of soldiers’ remains.
