Ukraine And Russia To Talk For First Time In Over 3 Years, But Without Putin Or Zelenskyy

By RFE/RL May 15, 2025

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine will hold direct face-to-face peace talks for the first time in more than three years in Istanbul, though the teams will be composed of lower-level technocrats after President Vladimir Putin said he would not attend.

The delegations are scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. local time on May 15 at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul and will be held in private without press access, Russian media reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is said to be on his way to Turkey, as scheduled, even though Putin decided against traveling to the talks. Zelenskyy will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara but will not attend the peace talks in Istanbul.

He had said he was willing to meet with Putin, but not with lower level Russian officials.

Expectations that US President Donald Trump would also attend the talks were dashed when a Kremlin statement said Putin signed an order on May 14 naming four negotiators and four experts who will comprise the Russian delegation.

Trump, who is in the region on a four-day visit to several Middle Eastern countries, had said he would go if that persuaded Putin to participate.

"I don't know that he [Putin] would be there if I'm not there," Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew from Saudi Arabia to Qatar on May 14.

"I know he would like me to be there, and that's a possibility. If we could end the war, I'd be thinking about that," he said before the Kremlin statement.

US media reported that envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg are still expected to be in Istanbul.

The Kremlin statement said Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin, who took part in talks held between the two sides in the weeks following Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, will be among the negotiators.

The delegation will be led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin who also took part in the last round of talks more than three years ago.

Medinsky is seen as influential in advancing Russia's historical claims over large portions of Ukraine and has written textbooks with a nationalist view of Russian history that has been questioned by independent historians.

Igor Kostyukov, director of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the GRU, Russia's Foreign Military Intelligence Agency, is also named as a negotiator. Kostyukov was identified in the Kremlin announcement as chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.

Negotiators held several rounds of talks in March 2022 in Belarus and in Turkey before the negotiations broke down.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had challenged Putin to meet him in person at the talks, which are to take place in Istanbul, said earlier this week that Putin's absence would be a clear signal that he was not genuinely interested in peace.

"I am waiting to see who will arrive from Russia. Then I will decide what steps Ukraine should take," Zelenskyy said on May 14.

Zelenskyy had said he was prepared to meet Putin face-to-face after the Russian leader called for direct talks. Zelenskyy also has said he would only meet the Russian leader, not a delegation of officials from Moscow.

Putin proposed direct negotiations "without any preconditions."

What Can Peace Talks Achieve?

The talks are aimed at moving toward a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow to end Europe's worst conflict since World War II. However, the absence of the Russian and US presidents lowers the expectations for a major breakthrough in the war that Russia started in February 2022.

There had been skepticism over the chances for success at the talks even before the news that neither Putin nor Trump would attend.

Lithuanian Ambassador to Sweden Linas Linkevicius told Current Time that while everyone wants a breakthrough, he doesn't see grounds for one because the starting positions held by all the parties are vastly different.

"There is no talk about Ukraine's interests, about [Russia's] legal responsibility, which is important because all those crimes committed by that country and its leader," Linkevicius said. "You cannot just push it all aside and pretend that we are just doing business from now on."

Linkevicius also predicted Russia would lecture about the "root causes" of the conflict and once they are addressed might talk about some sort of a cease-fire.

"In other words, there will be no cease-fire again," he said. "They will drag their feet to buy time and in my opinion prepare for a summer military campaign."

Russian independent political scientist Natalia Shavshukova told Current Time that Putin's real motivation was only to meet the US president.

"Putin's only interest is a direct meeting with Trump.... And Ukraine has become an excuse for the two leaders to meet," Shavshukova said, adding Putin doesn't appear interested in making a peace deal with Ukraine at the moment.

In an interview with Le Monde, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, said Putin's absence in Turkey on May 15 signals that "Moscow does not want peace and is not ready for serious negotiations."

"We don't trust Russia.... But we want to end this conflict, and we are ready to accept any negotiation format," Yermak told Le Monde.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha has already arrived in Antalya on Turkey's Mediterranean coast, where NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte chaired an informal meeting of foreign ministers from the military alliance.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is scheduled to take part in the talks on ending the war along Witkoff and Kellogg, met with Sybiha on May 14 on the sidelines of the NATO foreign ministers' meeting.

Sybiha said on X that he explained Zelenkyy's "vision of further peace efforts" during "this critical week." He and Rubio "discussed in detail the logic of further steps and shared our approaches," he said.

Russia has launched waves drone and missile strikes at Ukraine in recent weeks amid the push for a cease-fire.

Artem Kobzar, the acting mayor of Sumy city, said such strikes killed two people and injured two others in Ukraine's Sumy region on May 14. The death toll was later raised to three.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/33414716.html

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Ukraine And Russia To Talk For First Time In Over 3 Years, But Without Putin Or Zelenskyy