Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have sat down for their first direct talks in three years, but hopes for a breakthrough at the meeting in Turkiye remain dim.
Officials from Russia, Ukraine and the United States arrived in Istanbul on Friday morning for the talks, the first since shortly after Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.
Turkish television showed the negotiators sitting down, together with Turkish representatives, in the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that the meeting had begun.
However, optimism is low that the negotiations could produce significant progress towards a ceasefire, after Russian President Vladimir Putin spurned an offer by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet face to face in Turkiye.
Zelenskyy said he was sending a team headed by his defence minister to Istanbul for the talks, even as he said that the Russian delegation did not include “anyone who actually makes decisions”, accusing Moscow of not making efforts to end the war.
Zelenskyy’s announcement on Thursday came after the Kremlin said Putin had no intention to meet with him in Turkiye, sending instead a junior delegation for the planned talks – a move that Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said was “like a slap in the face”.
Putin’s absence punctured hopes of a breakthrough in ceasefire efforts that were pushed in recent months by the Trump administration and Western European leaders. It also raised the prospect that some of Ukraine’s allies could impose more sanctions on Russia.
The Ukrainian delegation will be headed by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov with the aim “to attempt at least the first steps toward de-escalation, the first steps toward ending the war – namely, a ceasefire”, Zelenskyy said.
Russia’s team is headed by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister, who said that he viewed talks with Kyiv as a “continuation” of failed negotiations in 2022.
The terms under discussion back then, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia’s initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for deep cuts to the size of Ukraine’s military.
Medinsky said on Telegram that his team had held “productive” talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Thursday evening, adding that he expected Ukraine’s representatives to turn up for discussions in Istanbul on Friday at 10am local time (07:00 GMT).
Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting in front of the Ukrainian embassy in Ankara, said Zelenskyy chose a delegation “in equilibrium” with the Russian one.
“He said they didn’t mind taking the first step towards an immediate ceasefire that is necessary for direct peace talks,” she said.
Still, “there won’t be any negotiations, and Zelenskyy underlined that even his delegation has no mandate to decide anything. So tomorrow, it is probably going to be technical talks between the two delegations,” she added.
US President Donald Trump, who had pressed for Putin and Zelenskyy to meet face to face in Istanbul, brushed off Putin’s absence from the talks.
“Nothing’s going to happen until Russian President Vladimir Putin and I get together, OK?” Trump said on board Air Force One just before landing in the UAE on the third stop of his Middle East trip. “I didn’t think it was possible for Putin to go if I’m not there.”
Trilateral talks are also planned between the United States, Ukraine and Turkiye, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara.
Whether there will be a four-party meeting between the US, Russia, Ukraine and Turkiye has not yet been decided, it said.
The US delegation is led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He suggested on Thursday that Washington has little optimism that the talks will produce an end to the war.
“I want to be frank,” he told reporters. “We don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow.”
Winding up a tour of the Middle East on Friday, Trump said he would meet with Putin “as soon as we can set it up”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said shortly afterwards that a meeting is essential but required considerable preparation and had to yield results when it happened.
“Such a meeting is certainly necessary. It is necessary both primarily from the point of view of bilateral Russian-US relations and from the point of view of having a serious conversation at the highest level about international affairs and on regional problems, including, of course, about the crisis over Ukraine,” Peskov said.
Commenting on the Istanbul talks, Peskov said that the Russian negotiating team was in constant communication with Moscow and that Putin was receiving real-time updates
