US President Donald Trump said on Thursday, the 15th of May, that no progress towards peace in Ukraine will be made until he meets Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, while talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Turkey have turned into a major fiasco, according to Politico and Reuters.
“Listen, nothing is going to happen until I meet with Putin,” Trump told reporters on a plane en route to the United Arab Emirates. “And he wasn’t going to go there… He wasn’t going to go there if I wasn’t there. And I don’t believe anything is going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I meet. But we’re going to have to resolve this because too many people are dying.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in Turkey to go to peace talks after meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but Putin refused to attend and instead sent a lower-level delegation, angering the Kyiv side and delaying the talks already scheduled for yesterday.
THESE WILL BE THE FIRST DIRECT TALKS BETWEEN THE TWO SIDES SINCE MARCH 2022, BUT NO MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH IS EXPECTED.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also told reporters later that there would be no breakthrough in the talks “until President Trump and President Putin talk directly about this issue” and that Washington “does not have high hopes” for the Ukraine talks in Istanbul.
Referring to the current state of the talks as a “deadlock”, Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul on Friday to meet with the Turkish foreign minister and the Ukrainian delegation.
The head of the Russian delegation, Presidential Adviser Vladimir Medinsky, said that he expected Ukrainian representatives to arrive in Istanbul on Friday at 10:00 am local time for the start of the discussions.
“We are ready to work,” Medinsky said in a video on Telegram. He said his delegation had “productive” talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Thursday evening.
Zelenskyy said Putin’s decision not to attend but to send what he called a “decorative” line-up showed that the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war. Russia accused Ukraine of trying to “put on a show” around the talks.
“We cannot run around the world looking for Putin,” Zelenskyy said after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.
“I feel disrespected by Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation – this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump,” Zelenskyy told reporters.
Zelenskyy said he would not go to Istanbul either. Instead, Zelenskyy will travel with Erdogan to the European Political Community summit in Tirana on Friday.
After his meeting with the Turkish President in Ankara, Zelenskyy announced that he was sending a delegation led by Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov to Istanbul to discuss the ceasefire. He said he agreed to this out of respect for Erdogan and Trump.
“OUR TEAM WILL BE READY TO DISCUSS THE CEASEFIRE TOMORROW,” SAID ZELENSKYY, ADDING: “WE WILL NOT RECOGNISE ANY TERRITORY OCCUPIED BY RUSSIA AS RUSSIAN TERRITORY.”
Meanwhile, Medinsky told reporters in Istanbul that Russia sees these talks as a “continuation” of the failed 2022 negotiations, which took place shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of a neighbouring country.
“The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is to achieve, sooner or later, the establishment of a long-term peace by addressing the root causes of the conflict,” Medinsky said.
According to the draft 2022 agreement, one of the requirements is that Ukraine agrees to permanent neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees. Putin has also held firm to his long-standing demands that Kyiv withdraw from the territory and abandon its ambitions to join NATO.
“The Russians are going to continue the offensive in Ukraine while insisting on negotiations and, let’s be honest, this is normal practice,” Kirill Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday. “Negotiations do not mean a solution.”
Russia said on Thursday that its forces had seized two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. A spokesman for Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment last year that Ukraine “will become smaller and smaller” as fighting continues.
“They are still too far away to fight for the Dnipro, but they will try to penetrate the region. We have to deal with an enemy that wants to destroy our whole country”, Budanov added.
BNN already reported that Putin on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine on Thursday in Turkey “without any preconditions”. Since returning to the White House, President Trump has been pushing for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine and he wants the two sides to sign a 30-day ceasefire agreement. Zelenskyy is in favour of an immediate 30-day ceasefire, but Putin has said that he first wants to start talks where the details of such a ceasefire could be discussed.