Ukraine talks still on after day of uncertainty

KYIV, Ukraine — An anticipated round of Ukraine peace talks in Turkey descended into bluster and confusion Thursday, as Ukrainian and Russian delegations arrived in different cities and spent much of the day questioning whether they would even meet with one another.

By evening, both sides indicated that the talks in some form were still on, but that they could be postponed until Friday. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, visiting the Turkish capital of Ankara, slammed the Kremlin for its “disrespect” in sending a midlevel delegation to Istanbul, where Russia wanted the talks to take place.

“There is no time of the meeting, there is no agenda of the meeting, there is no high-level delegation,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference after sitting down with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. “I think Russia’s attitude is unserious.”

After a day of uncertainty over whether Ukraine would participate in the talks in Istanbul, Zelenskyy said he would send a pared-down delegation there, led by the minister of defense, Rustem Umerov. He said he made the decision to show that Ukraine would engage in any effort for peace, even one with the slimmest chance of success, after President Vladimir Putin of Russia rebuffed his appeal to meet in person in Turkey.

Overshadowing it all was President Donald Trump, who told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One that “nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together.” Trump, who was in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday, had earlier said he might travel to Turkey on Friday “if something happened” in the peace talks. However, there was no other indication that a last-minute summit would materialize.

Putin last weekend proposed direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, in what would be the first known face-to-face negotiation between the two sides since the first weeks of the war, in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion. Zelenskyy upped the ante by calling on Putin himself to come, and arrived in Ankara on Thursday with his foreign minister and other senior officials.

But Putin refused, and instead sent a delegation that was a mirror image of the one he dispatched for the 2022 talks, which fell apart after about two months and included a high-profile meeting in Istanbul. In that negotiation, Russia made numerous demands that would undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty, seeking a pledge that the country would never join NATO and would limit the size of its military.

Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister who led Russia’s delegation in 2022 and resumed that role Thursday, told reporters that Russia saw the new round of talks as “a continuation of the peace process” of that year.

“The delegation is committed to a constructive approach, focused on finding possible solutions and points of contact,” Medinsky said.

Neither side specified when, exactly, a meeting would take place. Zelenskyy made it clear that Ukraine’s expectations were low.

“Russia does not want to end this war,” he said.

Zelenskyy said the United States and Turkey would be involved in any talks. Turkey, though it is a NATO member, has taken a largely neutral stance in the war, maintaining ties with Ukraine but refusing to sanction Russia.

A Turkish official said that Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, was in Istanbul on Thursday, and that Steve Witkoff, the special envoy for the Middle East and Russia, was expected to arrive Friday.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Antalya, Turkey, for other meetings, said the Trump administration was “impatient” for progress in the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia. The United States was “open to virtually any mechanism” that could engender a lasting peace, Rubio said, adding, “We remain committed to that.”

Thursday’s chaotic diplomacy highlighted the wide divergence between Russia and Ukraine over how to end the war.

Zelenskyy wants an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, followed by negotiations over a potential peace deal. But Putin, who appears confident of Russia’s upper hand on the battlefield, is refusing to stop fighting before he secures major concessions from Ukraine and the West.

Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, indicated Thursday that Russia would continue to seek wide-ranging concessions rather than an immediate ceasefire. Speaking at Russia’s consulate in Istanbul, Medinsky repeated Putin’s frequent phrasing that any peace deal needed to tackle the “root causes” of the conflict — Kremlin shorthand for a range of issues including the existence of Ukraine as an independent country aligned with the West.

“The goal of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is — sooner or later — to achieve the establishment of a lasting peace by addressing the fundamental root causes of the conflict,” Medinsky said.

Russian state media had reported that the talks were to take place at an Istanbul palace on the Bosporus where Ukraine-Russia negotiations were held in March 2022. And so dozens of reporters on Thursday morning thronged outside a side entrance to that palace, Dolmabahce, forcing confused ferry commuters to scramble for a detour around the press scrum. But throughout the day, there were no negotiators in sight.

The prospect of a high-profile ceasefire negotiation in Turkey was the latest turn in a rapidly shifting diplomatic landscape.

Trump came into office this year promising to bring the war to a swift conclusion. He began his efforts on Feb. 12, with phone calls to Putin and Zelenskyy, but did not coordinate with European allies, who have urged the United States to put more pressure on Russia to get the Kremlin to compromise.

But Trump instead pressured Ukraine, blaming it for causing a war that Russia had started.

In late February, Zelenskyy met with Trump in Washington — a disastrous visit in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance castigated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office for not being grateful enough for U.S. support, as journalists recorded the scene. The Trump administration then briefly suspended military assistance and intelligence sharing.

At the same time, Trump was trying to induce Moscow to agree to a ceasefire by holding out the prospect of economic relief from sanctions.

Later in the spring, at a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Zelenskyy agreed to a key demand of the Trump administration: an immediate and unconditional 30-day ceasefire, abandoning demands that Western countries guarantee Ukraine’s future security before it agrees to a truce.

Putin rebuffed that idea and proposed a three-day ceasefire to coincide with an annual Victory Day parade in Moscow commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Ukraine did not agree to that.

Overall, during the first months of this year, while Trump was trying to broker peace talks, the hostilities were far deadlier than the same period last year, according to the United Nations.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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