Will Putin Be in Turkey for Peace Talks? Kremlin’s List Suggests Not.

 

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.