CNN
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Days of speculation that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky could meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Turkey have ended with the Kremlin pouring cold water on the idea, confirming that the Russian leader had decided not to show up for talks he himself suggested.
The possibility of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine was not entirely off the table as of Thursday morning, however, with lower-level delegations from both countries known to be in Turkey.
A direct meeting would be a major development – the two sides are not known to have met directly since soon after Moscow launched its unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
And while the talks are unlikely to yield immediate results, and almost certainly won’t bring the elusive “deal” US President Donald Trump has been promising since his return to the White House, they could still have a major impact on the future of the war – if Trump decides that Putin’s no-show is a sign of his unwillingness to end the war.
Adding to the general uncertainty over how a day of high-stakes diplomacy might unfold, Zelensky is sitting down with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital, Ankara, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in southern Turkey for an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
Here is what we know.
The talks were first proposed by Putin in response to the ceasefire-or-sanctions ultimatum given to Moscow by Ukraine’s European allies on Saturday, when the leaders of Germany, France, Poland and the United Kingdom demanded that Russia accept a 30-day ceasefire proposal or face a new round of “massive” sanctions.
Putin ignored the ultimatum, proposing instead “direct talks” between Russia and Ukraine.
This was likely a delaying tactic by Putin – something he has successfully deployed several times in the past. But it appears to have backfired.
The Europeans and Ukraine initially said there could be no talks before a ceasefire is agreed, but that quickly changed when Trump got involved. In a post on social media, he publicly urged Zelensky to “HAVE THE MEETING, NOW!!!”
Putin wasn’t suggesting a one-on-one with his loathed Ukrainian counterpart. He said he wanted a restart of the talks that took place in the spring of 2022 and were attended by top-level diplomats, but not the leaders themselves.
But Zelensky raised the stakes by announcing he would travel to Turkey himself and calling on Putin to do the same. The Ukrainian leader made it clear that he would not meet with any other Russian official, arguing that “everything in Russia depends on Putin.”
Trump, currently on a Middle East tour, added to the pressure by suggesting he might go as well, “if it’s helpful.” That idea was endorsed by Zelensky, who said Ukraine would be “grateful” for Trump’s presence. Trump also told CNN on Wednesday that Putin would “like me to be there.”
But two White House officials told CNN that Trump was not planning to travel to Turkey. “I was thinking about going,” Trump said Thursday in Qatar, but stressed it wasn’t a firm plan. He kept the option open, though, adding: “If something happened, I’d go on Friday if it was appropriate.”
By putting the ball in Putin’s court, Zelensky placed the Russian leader under pressure.
If Putin had decided to show up, he would have undermined his own narrative that Zelensky and his government are illegitimate.
But by staying at home, Putin gave Zelensky an opportunity to point out, once again, that Russia is not serious about peace.
This message is aimed squarely at Trump. Kyiv and its European allies have long said they don’t believe Putin is seriously interested in negotiating peace.
Trump has previously repeatedly expressed his belief in the opposite, although he began expressing his doubts in recent weeks, questioning whether Putin wants peace after speaking to Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral in the Vatican last month.
Highlighting this is likely the key reason why Zelensky suggested a personal meeting with Putin, who, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence services, had previously ordered his assassination.
The two sides are so far apart that it is unclear what the talks – if they indeed happen – would be about.
Zelensky said on Tuesday that anything other than an agreement on an unconditional ceasefire would be a failure.
Putin, meanwhile, said that while Russia does not rule out that “during these talks there will be a possibility to arrange some kind of new truce, a new ceasefire,” the talks will aim to eliminate the “root causes” of the conflict.
The “root causes” he cites include long-held Russian grievances that include the existence of Ukraine – formerly part of the Soviet Union – as a sovereign state, and NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War.
Neither is negotiable for Ukraine or its allies.
What happened the last time Ukraine and Russia talked?
The last known direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow took place in Turkey and Belarus in the spring of 2022 – when it became clear that Putin’s initial plan to take over the whole of Ukraine and install a new puppet government in Kyiv within a few days had gone catastrophically wrong.
This left Russia scrambling, trying to achieve its goals through negotiations.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor, said the agreement that was proposed by Moscow called for Ukraine to surrender its sovereignty and would have made Ukraine completely powerless in the face of any future attacks.
Once Ukrainian forces began liberating parts of northern Ukraine, finding clear evidence of massacres and other atrocities as they advanced, the talks started to collapse.
The Russian abuses uncovered in one town in particular – Bucha, just north of Kyiv – horrified the world and hardened the resolve of the Ukrainian people.
Shortly after Zelensky challenged the Russian leader to travel to Turkey, the Kremlin started to lay the groundwork for the possibility that Putin might not attend.
The Kremlin late Wednesday said Vladimir Medinsky, Putin’s senior aide and member of the country’s Supreme Council bureau, would lead a delegation of Kremlin insiders. The aide previously headed Russia’s delegation in 2022 when Kyiv and Moscow had their last known direct talks.
This is in line with Putin’s call for the talks to pick up where the meeting in 2022 stopped – an option that would be unpalatable to the Ukrainians since the demands Russia was making back then would amount to a capitulation by Kyiv.
The stakes are higher this time though, as both Trump and Ukraine’s European allies have said they will impose more sanctions on Moscow if it doesn’t agree to the ceasefire.
It’s not yet clear whether Ukraine will send a delegation to Istanbul to meet with the Russian negotiators and who might be part of it.
Not much. The Turkish government said earlier this week that it was prepared to provide “all kinds of support, including mediation and hosting negotiations, to achieve peace” in Ukraine.
Turkey has played the role of the bridge between Moscow and Kyiv in the past, most notably when it brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative which guarantees the safe passage of Ukrainian ships carrying food exports – a rare diplomatic success in the brutal conflict. Russia withdrew from the pact in 2023.
As a NATO member, Turkey is invested in the conflict, but it is also seen as more amenable to Russia, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously hailing his “special relationship” with Putin.
Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, and his foreign envoy Steve Witkoff both plan to be in Istanbul this week, a senior Trump administration official said on Tuesday, a statement confirmed by another source familiar with the plans.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also in Turkey, attending the informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Antalya.
Rubio, Kellogg and Witkoff all took part in some of the previous rounds of talks in Saudi Arabia, in which they acted as intermediaries, meeting separately with the Russian delegation and then, a few days later, with the Ukrainians.
This time, the possibility that the two delegations might meet face to face is significant – even if their goal is more about satisfying Trump than reaching an actual deal.
