Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday he would attend talks on the war in Ukraine this week only if Russian President Vladimir Putin is also present.
Zelenskyy stated he would meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday or Thursday and was ready to meet Putin either there or in Istanbul.
What do we know about the Istanbul talks?
The talks are now the centerpiece of peace efforts led by US President Donald Trump, who said he would send Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He mentioned the talks “could produce some pretty good results.”
Trump is also expected to send senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg to the talks.
The Kremlin has not confirmed whether Putin will take part in the talks, scheduled for Thursday in Istanbul, more than three years into Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, questioned whether Vladimir Putin had the nerve to attend the talks.
“I think it’s a good move if they sit down,” Kallas said at a democracy conference in Copenhagen. “But I don’t think he dares, Putin.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday urged both sides to seize the “window of opportunity” to reach a peace settlement.
What does Zelenskyy want?
Zelenskyy has said he wants to negotiate an unconditional 30-day ceasefire as a first step toward ending the war. He has insisted that Vladimir Putin should take part because “absolutely everything in Russia” depends on him.
“We want to agree on a beginning to the end of the war,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference. But he added: “He [Putin] is scared of direct talks with me.”
Zelenskyy also mentioned he expects the United States and European Union to impose “strong sanctions” if the talks do not take place.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday Europe would impose new sanctions on Russia if Moscow failed to agree to a ceasefire
Have there been direct Russia-Ukraine talks in the past?
Russian and Ukrainian officials last held talks in Istanbul in March 2022 in an effort to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but no agreement was reached.
Since then, contact between the warring sides has been extremely limited, focused mainly on humanitarian matters such as prisoner-of-war exchanges and the return of fallen soldiers’ bodies.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
