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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed to travel to Turkey regardless of Vladimir Putin’s plans, raising the stakes in a western-led pressure campaign to get the Russian president to engage in peace talks.
Zelenskyy plans to travel to Ankara on Thursday where he will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and await Putin’s arrival in Istanbul or anywhere else in Turkey.
“If he takes the step to say he is ready for a ceasefire, then it opens the way to discussing all the elements to end the war,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Tuesday.
If Putin refuses to show, “it means only one thing: that Russia is not ready for negotiations”, Zelenskyy said. In that case the US and European partners must follow through with their threat to impose “strong sanctions” on Russia, he added.
Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said on Tuesday that European nations were working together on a “significant tightening” of sanctions if they agreed that there was no “real progress” from Putin.
Merz said that he admired Zelenskyy’s willingness to compromise but added: “I believe more compromise and more concessions are no longer reasonable.”
Zelenskyy said he was not willing to meet any Russian officials other than Putin, as a “deal” could be made only with Russia’s president.
If the leaders’ meeting does not take place, a team of Ukrainian negotiators could meet with Russian counterparts, according to the Ukrainian president’s office.
Putin first floated the idea of a meeting in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators — but not leaders — in a brief speech on Sunday, following weeks of pressure from Kyiv, Washington and European capitals to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.
The Kremlin has refused to clarify whether the Russian president would attend. Asked about Putin’s plans on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “Russia continues to prepare for the talks” and would announce who will participate “as soon as the president deems it necessary”.
On Monday, Peskov criticised the western threat of more sanctions as “inappropriate”.
US President Donald Trump has urged both sides to hold talks as soon as possible.
Trump, who began the first foreign trip of his second term in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, said on Monday that he was open to joining negotiations between his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Turkey “if I think things can happen, but we’ve got to get it done”.
The US president said secretary of state and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio will travel to Turkey to take part.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov on Tuesday listed some of the topics that Moscow expects to be up for discussion in Istanbul, including “solving issues related to the denazification of the Kyiv regime”, a term Russian officials and propagandists use to indicate a change of leadership in Ukraine, particularly Zelenskyy, who is Jewish.
Ryabkov said that “recognition of the realities” on the ground, including “the entry of new territories into the Russian Federation”, should also be on the agenda, referring to the parts of southern and eastern Ukraine that are under Russian occupation.
The Ukrainian side is seeking an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire as a prerequisite to broader, formal negotiations, said Zelenskyy. Should Putin agree, the ceasefire would be followed by lower-level talks focused on practical implementation, security guarantees and broader frameworks for de-escalation, he said.
He said that since the US first proposed an unconditional ceasefire more than two months ago, Kyiv has been ready to implement it. Russia, on the other hand, he said, has continued its invasion, attacking Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones and launching new offensives across the 1,000km frontline.
Deep State, a Ukrainian analytical group close to the defence ministry, said that Russian forces this week had seized more ground in the eastern Donetsk region, particularly around the flashpoint cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.
Ukrainian intelligence officials told the Financial Times that Russia appears to be gearing up for a larger offensive, moving forces to key hotspots on the battlefield, rather than signalling its readiness for peace talks.
