Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that a delegation of high-level Russian officials will travel to Turkiye for direct talks on the war in Ukraine tomorrow, but the Russian president himself does not appear on a list of attendees.
The Kremlin posted an order issued by Putin on its website late on Wednesday stating that adviser Vladimir Medinsky, Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin, and director of the Main Intelligence Directorate Igor Kostyukov will be among those traveling to Turkiye, but Putin’s name does not appear in the order.
The planned negotiations, expected to take place on Thursday in Istanbul, Turkiye’s commercial hub, would be the first direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow since 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour, and Putin’s possible attendance has been a matter of discussion for days.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had previously stated that he would travel to Turkiye for direct talks and challenged Putin to do the same, stating that a refusal to attend would be evidence that the Russian leader “does not want to end the war”.
“Today, we held several meetings with the team regarding the format in Turkiye,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Thursday. “I am waiting to see who will come from Russia, and then I will decide which steps Ukraine should take. So far, the signals from them in the media are unconvincing.”
United States President Donald Trump had previously suggested that he could visit Turkiye to attend the discussions himself during a trip to the Middle East, but the news agency Reuters reported on Thursday that Trump would not attend, citing a US official.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is already set to travel to Istanbul on Friday.
“Marco is going and Marco has been very effective,” Trump previously said.
Zelenskyy is expected to hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday. The Ukrainian leader hosted his counterparts from the UK, France, Germany and Poland on Saturday, where they issued a joint call for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine starting on Monday. The US has endorsed that plan, and Western leaders have warned that another round of sanctions against Russia could follow if Putin does not accept.
Lula urges Putin to hold talks
Earlier on Wednesday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to press Putin to attend negotiations with Zelenskyy in Turkiye.
Lula is expected to stop in the Russian capital on the way back from attending a regional forum in China.
“I’ll try to talk to Putin,” Lula said at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday before his departure.
“It costs me nothing to say, ‘Hey, comrade Putin, go to Istanbul and negotiate, dammit,'” he said.
Lula’s comments come after the Ukrainian foreign minister urged Brazil to use its influence with Russia to secure a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.
Brazil and China issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling for direct negotiations as the “only way to end the conflict”.
Peskov also condemned comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron that Paris was open to deploying nuclear-armed warplanes in other European countries.
On Tuesday, Macron told France’s TF1 television that nuclear arms proliferation would not enhance the continent’s security.
“The Americans have the bombs on planes in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Turkiye,” he said, adding, “We are ready to open this discussion. I will define the framework in a very specific way in the weeks and months to come.”
With France as the European Union’s only nuclear-armed nation, discussion to place bombers in other countries across the bloc is growing after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
