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Russian President Vladimir Putin is not one of the names mentioned by the Kremlin, as a result of peace talks about the war in Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday, despite calls from Volodymyr Zensky van Ukraine for him to attend.
The Russian delegation will be led instead by presidential assistant Vladimir Medinsky, according to the Kremlin statement.
Zensky had said before that he would attend the conversations and meet Putin personally if the Russian president agreed, and said he would do everything he could to ensure that the face-to-face meeting took place.
The Ukrainian president will be in the Turkish capital Ankara on Thursday to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Putin and Zensky have not met personally since December 2019. Russia and Ukraine lasted direct negotiations in March 2022 in Istanbul, shortly after Moscow launched his neighbor’s full invasion.
Fighting has been raging in Ukraine ever since. Russian armed forces have slowly expanded the amount of territory that they check in the past year, usually in eastern Ukraine.
Putin had initially called for direct conversations between Russia and Ukraine in the largest city in Turkey “without pre-conditions”, before Zensky announced that he would go personally and expected that the Russian president would also travel.
Putin’s suggestion of direct conversations in Istanbul followed Western Powers’ call for a 30-day ceasefire, after European leaders met on Saturday in Kiev.
After Trump called Ukraine to accept the offer on Sunday, Zensky said he would travel there himself.
“It makes no sense to extend the murders. And I am waiting for Putin in Türkiye on Thursday. Personally,” Zelensky wrote in a post on social media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Donald Trump drove the opportunity to get to the meeting if Putin did.
The US president, who is currently in Qatar, told reporters that he did not know whether his Russian counterpart would attend “if I am not there”.
“I know he would like me to be there, and that is a possibility. If we could end the war, I would think about that,” Trump said.
The US is expected to send a high -level delegation to the conversations.
The best diplomat in the country, Marco Rubio, arrived in Turkey on Wednesday, where he will meet NATO ministers of Foreign Affairs on Thursday.
Prior to that meeting, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said he met Rubio on Wednesday evening. Sybiha said he had confirmed the dedication of Ukraine to American peace efforts and called Russia to “answer the constructive steps of Ukraine”.
Rubio is planning to travel to Istanbul on Friday, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that he will follow conversations with European counterparts to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Arrived at his Antalya hotel on Wednesday, Rubio did not answer when the BBC asked him if Putin would come to Turkey.
Since returning to the White House, President Trump has tried to notice a ceasefire -fires between Russia and Ukraine.
He ended a western boycott of the Russian leader for years by talking to Putin by telephone in February, and his envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin for conversations in Moscow.
Trump has previously said that Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal”.
On Sunday, when Putin suggested the direct conversations, Trump posted on his social social platform: “A potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!”
