No delay in Istanbul peace talks as no meeting scheduled yet: Turkish Foreign Ministry

ANKARA

Though no meeting between Russian and Ukrainian delegations has yet been scheduled, the planned Istanbul peace talks is not postponed, Türkiye's Foreign Ministry sources said Thursday.

The sources noted that there is no scheduled meeting for the Istanbul peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, so the question of a delay is not raised.

A Russian delegation at the technical level and some U.S. officials are currently in Istanbul, the sources added.

Any confirmed meeting at any level will be made public, according to the sources.

Ukraine appeared to cast doubt on whether peace talks with Russia in Türkiye would take place on Thursday, with a senior official saying Kiev's delegation was waiting for an instruction from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"If the president decides, the delegation will be there," the official told AFP, adding that it was "not unrealistic" to expect talks on Thursday, but that Zelensky would decide following a meeting, currently ongoing, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Russia's top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said Thursday that Moscow was aiming for a "long-term peace" in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine for more than three years.

"The purpose of the direct talks proposed by (Vladimir) Putin is to establish long-term and lasting peace by eliminating the root causes of the conflict," Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline Kremlin aide sent to Istanbul as Russia's top negotiator, wrote on Telegram.

The Kremlin said it did not know if Ukraine's delegation will show up at Istanbul talks and that its team was waiting for them in the Turkish city.

"We do not know whether Ukrainian negotiators will show up or not, and how the talks will proceed. The Russian delegation is ready and waiting in Istanbul," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists at a daily briefing.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he did not expect progress on Ukraine until he meets Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who did not show up to talks in Türkiye.

"I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together," Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he flew from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates.

Türkiye's top diplomat said Thursday said there was cause for hope ahead of Istanbul talks between Russian and Ukrainian mediators in what would be their first direct talks in over three years.

"If the parties' positions are harmonised and trust is established, a very important step towards peace will have been taken," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a NATO meeting in the southern Turkish city of Antalya.

"We have enough reasons to be hopeful," he added.

Fidan said a U.S. delegation was also in Istanbul for the talks.

Russian President Putin declined Ukrainian President Zelensky's invitation for direct talks in Istanbul, instead dispatching aides and deputy ministers to the meeting.

Putin had proposed holding talks on May 15 in Istanbul as a counter-offer after Ukraine and European nations last week called for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

Zelensky had challenged Putin to meet him in person in Istanbul, but the Russian delegation names only a lower-level team, a move views by Kiev and its European allies as a diplomatic snub.

The Kremlin delegation is headed by Medinsky, a hardline aide to Putin and ex-culture minister who was involved in the 2022 negotiations.

Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, who had all been rumored as top negotiators after leading previous talks with the United States, were not named in the Kremlin's delegation list.

  Moscow, Kiev trade insults

Putin's no-show also diminished the importance of the first direct negotiations since a failed effort in the weeks after Russia's 2022 invasion. The May 15 talks were overshadowed by speculation over whether Putin would attend and a war of words between Moscow and Kiev.

Zelensky said on May 15 said that he had the impression Russia sent a "dummy" delegation with an unclear mandate to Türkiye.

"We need to understand the level of the Russian delegation and what their mandate is, if they are capable of making any decisions themselves," Zelensky said, adding that "from what we see, it looks more like a dummy.”

He added that Ukraine would "think about what we will do, what our steps will be, after we talk to [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan.”

Zelensky also said that Kiev sent a delegation of highest level to Türkiye “in order to make any decisions that can lead to just peace.”

In response, Russia called Zelensky a "clown" and a "loser" after he described the Russian delegation in Istanbul as “dummy.”

"Who uses the word 'dummy'? A clown? A loser? Someone with no education whatsoever," Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a weekly briefing from Moscow.

Lavrov also called Zelensky "pathetic" for demanding that Putin attend peace talks in Istanbul.

"At first Zelensky made some kind of statements that demanded Putin come personally. Well, a pathetic person," Lavrov said in a televised address to diplomats in Moscow.