On Friday, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators gathered in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks in more than three years, under pressure from US President Donald Trump to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
Live Turkish television images have shown Russian and Ukrainian negotiators who have discussions with a Turkish delegation. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was a speech at the start of the meeting.
The meeting of the Palais de Dolmabahçe on the Bosphorus marks a rare sign of diplomatic progress between the teams at war, who had not met face to face since March 2022, the month after the large -scale invasion of Russia.
The Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, headed the delegation of Ukraine, while the Russian party would be represented by a team led by presidential aid Vladimir Medinsky.
Half of the Ukrainian delegation wore military camouflage fatigue, sitting at a table directly in front of their Russian counterparts, who were in costume.
Fidan said it was essential to make a cease-fire as soon as possible. He said that he was happy to see the will of the two parties to open a new window of peace opportunity, and it was important that the talks of Istanbul form the basis of a meeting between the leaders of the two countries.
“There are two paths in front of us: a road will take us into a process that will lead to peace, while the other will lead to more destruction and death. The parties will decide on their own will, what path they choose,” said Fidan.
Sourdine expectations
The expectations for a major breakthrough, already weak, were tanned on Thursday when Trump said that there would be no movement without a meeting between him and the Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Trump, wrapping a tour of the Middle East and returning to Washington, said on Friday that he would meet the Russian chief “as soon as we can install him.”
The Kremlin confirmed early Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not attend peace talks in Istanbul, sending aid and subministers instead. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lost shortly after, rejecting the Russian delegation as “decorative”. William Taylor, a former American ambassador to Ukraine, says that it is particularly strange since Putin suggested the meeting in the first place.
The Kremlin said that a meeting between Putin and Trump was essential but required considerable prior preparation and had to give results when it happened.
“Such a meeting is certainly necessary. It is necessary both mainly from the point of view of Russian-American bilateral relations and from the point of view of having a serious conversation at the highest level on international affairs and on regional problems, in particular, of course, on the crisis on Ukraine,” said Peskov.
Commenting on Istanbul’s talks, Peskov said that the Russian negotiation team was in constant communication with Moscow and that President Putin received real -time updates.
Putin offered direct talks to Ukraine in Turkey on Sunday, but rejected the challenge of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet him in person, and rather sent a team of mid-cross officials to talks.
Zelenskyy said Putin’s decision not to attend, but to send what he called a “decorative” program has shown that the Russian chief was not serious to end the war.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also flew to Istanbul on Friday, journalists the day before that, on the basis of the level of negotiation teams, a major breakthrough was unlikely.
“I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m 100%mistaken. I hope that tomorrow, the news said that they have accepted a cease-fire; they agreed to take seriously negotiations. But I just give you my evaluation, honestly,” he said.
Russia controls approximately 20% of the territory
Russia says that it considers talks as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the first weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul.
But the terms under discussion then, when Ukraine was still in shock from the initial invasion of Russia, would be deeply disadvantaged for kyiv. They included a moscow request for large cuts to the size of the Ukrainian soldiers.
The Russian forces now control almost a fifth of Ukraine, Putin quickly held her long -standing requests to give in the territory, abandon his ambitions for membership in NATO and become a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects these terms as equivalent to capitulation and seeks guarantees of its future security of the world powers, in particular the United States.
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Russian Ministry of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that the government’s position on a possible peace agreement with Ukraine had changed to reflect changes on the front line lines where Russia has progressed.
Questioned by Reuters if the position of Russia had changed since June 2024 when President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine should officially lower his NATO ambitions and withdraw his troops from the entire territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia, Zakharova said: “Yes, there are these changes in the Russian position”.
“These changes are reflected by changes on the ground,” she said.
“Attrition war”
Ukraine rejected the initial assault of Russia on the capital, kyiv, in 2022 and resumed expanses of land seized by the Russians during the first year of the war. But Russian forces have slowly progressed for most of the last two years.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were injured or killed on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, entire cities have been destroyed and millions of Ukrainians were forced to flee their homes.
Moscow says he was forced to set up his “special military operation” in response to NATO’s expansion and the prospect that the Western Alliance would admit Ukraine as a member and use it as a launch to attack Russia. Any conflict settlement must approach these “deep causes”, says the Kremlin.
Kyiv and his allies reject this as a false pretext for what they call an imperial style taking.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine army head, said late Thursday that Russia currently has around 640,000 soldiers in Ukraine and had “transformed its aggression against Ukraine into an attrition war”.
