Ukraine's Zelenskiy insists on face-to-face talks with Putin in Istanbul

KYIV/MOSCOW - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will only attend talks on Ukraine this week if Russia's Vladimir Putin is also there, an aide to the Ukrainian leader said on Tuesday, challenging the Kremlin to show it is genuine about seeking peace.

US President Donald Trump has offered to attend Thursday's proposed meeting in Istanbul, which has become the focus of his attempts to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

Both Russia and Ukraine have sought to show they are working towards peace after Trump prioritised ending the war, but they have yet to agree on any clear path.

Putin on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine, after ignoring a Ukrainian proposal for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Trump then publicly told Zelenskiy to accept.

The Ukrainian leader then said he would be waiting for Putin in Istanbul on Thursday, though the Kremlin chief had never made clear he intended to travel himself.

"President Zelenskiy will not meet with any other Russian representative in Istanbul, except Putin," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters.

His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Zelenskiy's trip to Turkey showed Kyiv was ready for talks, but repeated Ukraine's stance that any negotiations must come after a ceasefire.

"Our position is very principled and very strong," Yermak told a conference in Copenhagen.

Moscow has not said if Putin will travel to Turkey.

"The Russian side continues to prepare for the negotiations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the talks and Zelenskiy's demand that Putin attend. "We are not going to comment any more yet."

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, unleashing a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

Trump has demanded the two nations end the war, threatening to walk away from efforts to broker a peace deal unless there are clear signs of progress soon.

The leaders of China and Brazil, members with Russia of the BRICS grouping of big emerging economies, said in a joint statement they hoped direct dialogue could begin as soon as possible and that they welcomed Putin's proposal to open negotiations.

Trump goes to Turkey?

If Zelenskiy and Putin, who make no secret of their mutual contempt, were to meet on Thursday, it would be their first face-to-face meeting since December 2019.

Trump, who arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday at the start of a four-day visit to the Gulf region, unexpectedly offered on Monday to travel to Istanbul.

"I was thinking about actually flying over there. There's a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen, but we've got to get it done," Trump said.

"Don't underestimate Thursday in Turkey," he added.

Following the offer, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the "way forward for a ceasefire" in Ukraine with his Ukrainian, British, French, Polish, German and EU counterparts.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, held talks with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.

Reuters reported last year that Putin was open to discussing a ceasefire with Trump, but that Moscow ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv must abandon ambitions to join Nato.

Ukraine has said it was ready for talks but a ceasefire was needed first, a position supported by its European allies.

Kyiv wants robust security guarantees as part of any peace deal and rejects a Russian proposal for restrictions on the size of its military. Territorial issues could be discussed once a ceasefire is in place, it says.

Putin has repeatedly referred to a 2022 deal that Russia and Ukraine negotiated shortly after the Russian invasion but never finalised.

Under the draft agreement, a copy of which Reuters has reviewed, Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Ceasefire, or sanctions

Ukraine and its European allies have told Russia that it would have to accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from Monday or face new sanctions.

France said on Monday that European leaders, who met in Ukraine over the weekend, had asked the European Commission to put together new "massive" sanctions targeting Russia's oil and financial sector if Russia failed to agree on a ceasefire.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul played down expectations of immediate new sanctions on Russia, however, saying the EU was looking instead to Thursday's meeting.

"Now, it is up to Russia. Russia must not leave the chair empty but must show up to the talks if it is seriously interested in peace," Wadephul told reporters.

Russia's forces control just under a fifth of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, almost all of Luhansk, and more than 70% of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, according to Russian estimates. It also controls a sliver of the Kharkiv region.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house of Russia's parliament, told the Izvestia media outlet in remarks published on Tuesday that the talks could move further than the 2022 negotiations.

- REUTERS