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Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that he will not participate in Turkey’s peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv on Thursday, despite prayers from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to participate.
White House officials said US President Donald Trump will also not go to Turkey for talks after Putin announced the list of Russian attendees, all are relatively low -level officials.
Putin for the first time proposed holding direct talks between Russia and Ukraine-“without prerequisites” last Sunday, in response to a request from Western Ukraine allies for a 30-day ceasefire in the war. He said the negotiations would be held in Turkey on Thursday.
The Russian president said their goal would be to “remove the essential causes of the conflict and go towards creating a long -term, lasting peace in a historical perspective”.
Zelenskyy said he was prepared to attend, but only if Putin also appeared because “everything in Russia depends” on the Russian leader.
“So I said that on Thursday) I would go to Turkey and I am ready to meet Putin, and one end of the war was through direct talks with him,” Zelenskyy reporters told Kyiv before Putin’s announcement.
However, from the beginning there were considerable doubts in Kyiv and other European capitals that the Russian leader would really appear, even though the idea of talks was his.
Trump initially welcomed Putin’s initiative, describing it as a “potentially excellent day for Russia and Ukraine”. The president, who is currently on an official visit to oil -rich states, had also said he could make a way out in Turkey to participate in the talks.
The reaction from some of his senior officials was more careful. Keith Kellogg, US Special Envoy in 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 Special envoy Steve Witkoff would also travel to Turkey to participate in the talks.
A person acquainted with Witkoff’s plans said he was 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 refused to answer questions whether Putin would participate in person, or who would be in the delegation.
Previous Russian meetings in Saudi Arabia were led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other senior diplomats. However, for Turkish talks, Putin said he is sending a delegation led by his adviser, former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky.
The mass signals that Russia is inclined to take the talks where they left in the spring of 2022, just weeks after Moscow began its full -scale occupation of its neighbor. Medinsky took the lead in those talks, though the talks were broken in Akrimoni and the fighting continued.
Medinsky will be joined by Deputy Minister of Defense Alexander Fomin, another member of the 2022 delegation, as well as Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin and Igor Kostyukov, director of the GRP Intelligence Directorate, Russia’s Military Intelligence Agency.
“Moscow is presenting its new initiative as’ nothing new to see here; after a long break, we are simply proposing to resume the 2022 negotiations that were interrupted by Ukraine at the behest of the West,” said Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Eurasia Carnegie Russia Center.
Putin’s decision to lose talks after a recent gap attempt by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to persuade him to go to a ban in Moscow.
However, no meeting was held within persons. Instead Lula arrived at Putin by phone, a statement issued by the Brazilian leader’s office.
