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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Turkey for peace talks this week intending to meet only with Russian President Vladimir Putin, not lower-level Russian officials, a top Ukrainian official said Tuesday.
Zelensky accepted Putin’s surprise proposal for direct negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday, challenging the Russian leader to a face-to-face meeting.
Putin had floated the meeting as a counteroffer to a Western-backed call for a 30-day ceasefire, though the Kremlin, seemingly caught off guard by Zelensky’s proposal to attend in person, has not confirmed whether the Russian leader will travel to Turkey.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is visiting the Middle East this week, told reporters at the White House that he would join the talks in Istanbul “if he thought it would be helpful.”
“This is not a presidential-level meeting,” if Putin doesn’t show up, Zelensky’s adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak told exiled Russian journalist Alexander Plyushchev in a YouTube interview. “There is one decision-maker on Ukraine’s side... and one decision-maker in Russia. Everything else is just formalities without results.”
Podolyak said a lower-level “technical meeting” could take place if Putin declines to attend, but noted that doing so would signal Russia’s unwillingness to end the war through direct talks.
“If Russia isn’t represented at the highest level, it means they’re not ready to stop the war or negotiate without intermediaries,” he said.
An unnamed Ukrainian official later confirmed to Reuters that Zelensky would only meet with Putin on Thursday.
The meeting would mark the first face-to-face contact between the two sides since the Istanbul peace talks in March 2022, which failed to produce an agreement to end the war.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said this week that he is ready to host the latest talks and urged both parties to seize a “window of opportunity” for peace. China, a key Russian ally, also backed the push for a “binding peace agreement” acceptable to all parties.
Putin has said direct talks should focus on the “root causes” of the conflict and did not rule out a potential ceasefire emerging from the Istanbul meeting.
AFP and Reuters contributed reporting.
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