US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to join talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday, with the Ukrainian president saying he wants to “intensify” peace negotiations.
“Bringing the end of the war closer with all our might is Ukraine’s top priority,” Zelensky said, adding that efforts would also focus on resuming prisoner exchanges.
Turkey has maintained ties with kyiv and Moscow and has previously hosted talks between the two factions.
But no Russian representatives are expected to attend the meeting in Ankara, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
He added that while there were “no concrete plans” for Vladimir Putin to address the Turkish side or Witkoff, the Russian president was “of course open to a conversation.”
Ankara will be the fourth capital that Zelensky will visit in just a few days. In Athens he secured a gas deal, in Paris he signed an agreement to obtain up to 100 fighter jets and in Madrid he held negotiations on cooperation with Spanish arms manufacturers.
The visits are part of Zelensky’s mission to boost European support for Ukraine, as Russian attacks on the country intensify and Moscow’s troops move closer to the key eastern city of Pokrovsk.
Domestically, Zelensky is facing the most serious crisis in years. Several members of his entourage are under investigation for co-organizing a vast criminal project and two ministers have resigned.
The scandal threatens to spread further and some EU leaders – who will decide in December whether to release a €140bn (£121bn) loan to kyiv based on the Russian state assets freeze – have warned that Zelensky must do more to tackle corruption.
As the fourth anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 draws closer, Moscow and kyiv remain fundamentally opposed in their visions on how to end the war.
Earlier in November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian conditions for a peace deal had not changed since Putin set them out in 2024.
The Russian president then demanded that kyiv renounce any ambition to join NATO, as well as Ukraine’s total withdrawal from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson.
Zelensky has repeatedly claimed that withdrawing from Donetsk and Luhansk – together known as Donbass – would leave the rest of the country vulnerable to future attacks.
After a lengthy meeting with Putin in April, Witkoff appeared to suggest that a peace deal between Moscow and kyiv depended on the status of disputed Ukrainian regions as well as Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. That stance led to tensions with Zelensky, who accused him of “spreading Russian narratives.”
Zelensky and Witkoff have not met since early September. Although the summer saw a flurry of high-level discussions and meetings – notably between Trump and Putin – US efforts to bring about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine have stalled.
At one point, it seemed that Trump and Putin were about to meet again in Budapest – but that summit was abandoned, apparently after the American side realized that Moscow had no intention of giving in on several demands unacceptable to kyiv.
But contacts between American and Russian officials continued, albeit discreetly. Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, reportedly traveled to Washington to meet with Witkoff in late October, just days after Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies.
