5/15/25
Bryony Gooch

Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine remain up in the air as president Vladimir Putin is notably absent from Russia’s in-person delegation list and US leader Donald Trump has announced he will no longer go to the Turkey summit either.

A US official said that Trump would no longer join the talks in Istanbul, having previously toyed with the idea of going if Putin was attending.

Russia announced their delegation list on Wednesday evening and the list did not include Putin’s name. Instead, the delegation included his adviser Vladimir Medinsky, deputy defense minister Alexander Fomin, and Igor Kostyukov, director of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency).

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser made it clear that the leader would not meet any representative of Russia in Turkey except the Kremlin leader. Zelensky even said he and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan would wait for Putin in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city.

He added that “if Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war.”

If both leaders were to attend the talks in Turkey, it would be the first time in the three-year conflict that they had sat down together.

Putin originally proposed restarting direct talks in Istanbul “without preconditions” last Thursday, with Zelensky challenging him to be there in person.

The Kremlin leader’s decision to restart talks comes as the US and other European leaders threatened Russia with further sanctions if there was no progress in halting the fighting in Ukraine...

Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Saturday that European allies, “together with the US”, were “calling Putin out”, as the pressure increases on Russia to accept an unconditional ceasefire.

Sir Keir said that allies would “ramp up sanctions” if the Russian president “turns his back on peace”, as he and allies backed plans for a 30-day ceasefire...

“They want Zelensky to be gone, they want to change the constitution, they want to demilitarize Ukraine’s military, they will not accept any peacekeepers in the nation if there is a peace deal, and the list goes on.” (excerpts)

Source:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukraine-peace-talks-turkey-putin-trump-b2751222.html