Ukraine and Russia on Thursday or Friday are due to hold their first direct peace talks in more than three years.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had travelled to Türkiye but said he would not attend the talks, after his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin declined his calls for face-to-face negotiations.
Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022 and Moscow’s army controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
Here’s what is known about the talks:
– When are the talks?
The meeting was initially planned for Thursday but Zelensky said “it could be today, it could be tomorrow”.
Putin last weekend proposed the talks for Thursday, but then the Kremlin spent several days refusing to say who would go or provide any details.
The Russian team arrived in Istanbul on Thursday morning, with the Ukrainian team expected to arrive there, travelling from the Turkish capital Ankara, in the evening.
Zelensky had earlier held talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday afternoon in Ankara.
– Who is expected to attend? –
The Russian side is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, a hardline aide to Putin and ex-culture minister who was involved in the 2022 negotiations.
The Kremlin named three other negotiators — Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin and Igor Kostyukov, director of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency.
Zelensky on Thursday criticised the level of Russia’s representatives and said it was a sign Moscow was not “serious” about negotiating an end to the war.
Top diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Usahkov — involved in previous talks with the United States — were also absent.
Because Putin is not joining, Zelensky said he also will not attend the talks, and instead sent a team led by his Defence Minister Rustem Umerov.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected in Istanbul on Friday “for meetings with European counterparts to discuss the conflict in Ukraine”.
– Where do the two parties stand? –
Zelensky said his team had a mandate to discuss an unconditional ceasefire that Kyiv, its allies, and the United States have been pushing for.
Russia has repeatedly rejected the proposal, insisting a whole range of questions had to be settled before a ceasefire could be agreed.
Beyond that, the fundamental differences between Kyiv and Moscow are far from being resolved.
Russia insists the talks address what it calls the “root causes” of the conflict, including the “denazification” and demilitarisation of Ukraine, two vague terms Moscow has used to justify the invasion.
It has also repeated that Ukraine must cede its territory occupied by Russian troops.
Kyiv said it will not recognise its territories as Russian — though Zelensky has acknowledged that Ukraine might only get them back through diplomatic means.
– What are the expectations? –
US President Donald Trump appeared to concede that progress in Türkiye was unlikely, saying there would be no movement towards ending the war until he met Putin.
But hosts Türkiye remained optimistic and Russia’s top negotiator said Moscow was ready to discuss “possible compromises” at the talks.
“Unfortunately, they are not taking the real negotiations very seriously,” Zelensky told reporters after a meeting with Erdoğan.
– Why Türkiye? –
NATO member Türkiye has sought to maintain good relations with both of its Black Sea neighbours since the Russian invasion began and has twice hosted talks on the war.
Representatives for Moscow and Kyiv discussed an outline to end the war in Istanbul in March 2022.
But those talks broke down following Russia’s retreat from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were found dead following a month-long occupation by Russian forces.
Moscow sees these talks as a “continuation” of those failed negotiations, Medinsky said Thursday.
Contact between the warring sides has been limited since and mainly dedicated to humanitarian issues such as prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of soldiers’ remains.