Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday he would attend talks on the war in Ukraine this week only if Russian President Vladimir Putin is also present.
Zelenskyy said he would meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday or Thursday and was ready to meet Vladimir Putin either there or in Istanbul.
What do we know about the Istanbul talks?
The talks are now the centerpiece of peace efforts led by US President Donald Trump, who said he would send Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He said the talks “could produce some pretty good results.”
The Kremlin has not confirmed whether Putin will take part in the talks, scheduled for Thursday in Istanbul, more than three years into Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two.
Trump is also sending senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg to the talks, according to three sources familiar with the plans.
What does Zelenskyy want?
Zelenskyy has said he wants to negotiate an unconditional 30-day ceasefire as a first step toward ending the war. He has insisted that Vladimir Putin should take part because “absolutely everything in Russia” depends on him.
“We want to agree on a beginning to the end of the war,” Zelenskiy said at a press conference. But he added: “He [Putin] is scared of direct talks with me.”
Zelenskiy also said he expects the United States and European Union to impose “strong sanctions” if the talks do not take place.
Have there been direct Russia-Ukraine talks in the past?
Russian and Ukrainian officials last held talks in Istanbul in March 2022 in an effort to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but no agreement was reached. Since then, contact between the warring sides has been extremely limited, focused mainly on humanitarian matters such as prisoner-of-war exchanges and the return of fallen soldiers’ bodies.
