Will
Putin Be in Turkey for Peace Talks? Kremlin’s List Suggests Not.
A hard-line
aide to the Russian president will instead lead the delegation, according to a
Kremlin statement.
Yonette
Joseph
By Yonette
Joseph
Published
May 14, 2025
Updated May
15, 2025, 2:06 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/world/europe/putin-ukraine-peace-talks-turkey.html
Russia on
Wednesday released a list of officials who will attend peace talks with Ukraine
in Turkey. But a key person was missing: President Vladimir V. Putin.
The absence
on the list of the Russian leader, who ordered the full-scale invasion of
Ukraine in 2022 that began the war, was a strong indication that Mr. Putin
would not come face to face this week with President Volodymyr Zelensky of
Ukraine, who has called him a murderer. The Kremlin said Mr. Putin himself had
signed off on the delegation.
President
Trump, who began pushing for peace talks before he took back the White House,
had said he would consider joining the meeting in Turkey.
“I was
thinking about actually flying over there,” Mr. Trump told reporters during a
White House news conference on Monday.
But on
Wednesday, Mr. Trump, who is on a three-nation tour of the Middle East,
indicated that he, too, would skip the talks and would instead visit the United
Arab Emirates as planned. But he said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would
attend.
“Tomorrow,
we’re all booked out, you understand that,” Mr. Trump told reporters on
Wednesday. “We’re going to U.A.E. tomorrow. So we have a very full situation.
Now that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it to save a lot of lives and come back.
But, yeah, I’ve been thinking about it.”
Of Mr.
Putin, Mr. Trump added: “I don’t know that he would be there if I’m not there.
We’re going to find out. Marco’s going and Marco’s been very effective.” Along
with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Trump’s special envoys Steven Witkoff and Keith Kellogg
were expected to travel to Turkey.
In a social
media post on Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky said he was “waiting to see who will come
from Russia” before deciding what steps Ukraine should take regarding the peace
talks. He also urged the “strongest” Western sanctions against Russia if Mr.
Putin rejected the meeting.
The Kremlin
said that the Russian delegation would be led by Vladimir Medinsky, a hard-line
aide to Mr. Putin. It would also include Deputy Defense Minister Alexander
Fomin, who was part of the Russian delegation in talks held between Moscow and
Kyiv in the weeks after the 2022 invasion; and other senior military and
intelligence officials.
Early
Thursday, the Russian news agency TASS reported that the closed-door talks
would begin at about 10 a.m. local time on Thursday at the Dolmabahce Palace in
Istanbul. But the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation,
Andriy Kovalenko, denied it.
The stakes
could not be higher for both sides in the largest land war in Europe since
World War II.
After more
than three years of war, Mr. Putin’s stance is that Russia is winning on the
battlefield. But analysts estimate Moscow has lost hundreds of thousands of
troops to death and injury. Its soldiers and brigades have been so depleted
that it turned to North Korea for troops, and Moscow has struggled to replace
destroyed equipment, analysts say.
Ukraine,
too, has lost troops, but far fewer than Russia, U.S. intelligence believes.
Kyiv’s forces, which made an audacious invasion into Russia’s Kursk region in
August 2024, have since pulled out almost entirely. They have also been
steadily losing ground in their country’s east.
As Mr. Trump
has pushed for talks, Kyiv has stressed that it needs security guarantees from
the United States. Ukraine signed a deal last month that gives America a share
of future revenues from its reserves of rare earth minerals. But the final deal
did not include explicit guarantees of future U.S. security assistance.
As the
pressure for peace has grown, the White House said in March that Ukraine and
Russia had agreed to cease fighting in the Black Sea and to work on details for
halting strikes on energy facilities. Later that month, after meetings were
held in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine said it would support a Trump administration
proposal for a 30-day cease-fire. That gave new momentum to truce negotiations,
which had faltered after a public clash at the White House between Mr. Zelensky
and Mr. Trump.
Then, in
April, Mr. Putin declared an “Easter truce,” ordering his forces to “stop all
military activity” against Ukraine for the holiday. It was apparently aimed at
showing an impatient Trump administration that Moscow was still open to peace
talks. But Kyiv said Russia broke its own truce.
After Mr.
Trump expressed frustration with Russia’s refusal to stop the war, Mr. Putin
ordered a three-day cease-fire to begin on May 8, to mark the May 9 celebration
of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Mr. Zelensky
described that pledge as a “manipulation.”
Then a
coalition of European allies gave Russia a deadline this month to agree to a
30-day cease-fire or face new sanctions.
In his post
Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky said he was “ready for any format of negotiations” with
Russia in Turkey.
“Russia is
only prolonging the war and the killings,” he added. “I want to thank every
country, every leader who is now putting pressure on Russia, so that the
shelling finally stops.”
Cicely
Wedgeworth and Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.
Yonette
Joseph is a senior editor based in Mexico City.
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