Putin to Miss Peace Talks in Turkey, Trump Also Absent

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced he will not take part in peace talks in Turkey between Moscow and Kyiv on Thursday, despite pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend. White House officials said that US President Donald Trump will also not go to Turkey for the talks after Putin announced the list of Russian attendees, all of whom are relatively low-level officials.

Putin first proposed holding direct talks between Russia and Ukraine — “without preconditions” — last Sunday, in response to a demand from Ukraine’s western allies for a 30-day ceasefire in the war. He said the negotiations would be held on Thursday in Turkey.

The Russian president said their purpose would be “to remove the root causes of the conflict and move towards creating a long-term, durable peace in a historical perspective”. Zelenskyy said he was prepared to attend, but only if Putin also showed up, because “everything in Russia depends” on the Russian leader.

“So I said that on [Thursday] I will go to Turkey and I’m ready to meet Putin, and an end to the war was through direct talks with him,” Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv ahead of Putin’s announcement.

However, from the start there was considerable doubt in Kyiv and other European capitals that the Russian leader would indeed turn up, even though the idea of the talks was his.

Trump initially hailed Putin’s initiative, describing it as a “potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine”. The president, who is currently on an official visit to the oil-rich Gulf states, had also said he might make a detour to Turkey to attend the talks.

The reaction from some of his senior officials was more cautious. Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, said there should be a ceasefire before peace negotiations.

White House officials announced earlier this week that Kellogg, secretary of state Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff would also be traveling to Turkey to take part in the talks.

A person familiar with Witkoff’s plans said he still intended to go to Turkey on Friday, despite Putin’s absence. Rubio is currently attending an informal meeting of Nato foreign ministers in the southern Turkish coastal town of Antalya.

Kremlin officials in recent days declined to answer questions about whether Putin would attend in person, or who would be in the delegation.

Previous Russia-US meetings in Saudi Arabia were led by foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and other top diplomats. However, for the Turkish talks, Putin said he is dispatching a delegation led by his adviser, former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky.

The move signals that Russia is keen for the talks to pick up where they left off in the spring of 2022, just weeks after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor. Medinsky took the lead in those talks, although the talks broke down in acrimony and fighting continued.

Medinsky will be joined by deputy defense minister Alexander Fomin, another member of the 2022 delegation, as well as deputy foreign minister Mikhail Galuzin and Igor Kostyukov, director of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

“Moscow is presenting its new initiative as ‘nothing new to see here; after a long break, we are merely proposing to resume the 2022 negotiations that were interrupted by Ukraine at the behest of the west’,” said Alexander Baunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Putin’s decision to miss the talks follows a last-ditch attempt by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to convince him to go during an impromptu stop in Moscow. However, no in-person meeting took place. Instead Lula reached Putin by phone, a statement issued by the Brazilian leader’s office said.