Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine remain up in the air as president Vladimir Putin is notably absent from Russia’s in-person delegation list and US leader Donald Trump has announced he will no longer go to the Turkey summit either.
A US official said that Mr Trump would no longer join the talks in Istanbul, having previously toyed with the idea of going if Putin was attending.
Russia announced their delegation list on Wednesday evening and the list did not include Putin’s name. Instead, the delegation included his adviser Vladimir Medinsky, deputy defence minister Alexander Fomin, and Igor Kostyukov, director of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency).
Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser made it clear that the leader would not meet any representative of Russia in Turkey except the Kremlin leader. Mr Zelensky even said he and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan would wait for Putin in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city.
He added that “if Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war.”
If both leaders were to attend the talks in Turkey, it would be the first time in the three-year conflict that they had sat down together.
Putin originally proposed restarting direct talks in Istanbul “without preconditions” last Thursday, with Mr Zelensky challenging him to be there in person.
The Kremlin leader’s decision to restart talks comes as the US and other European leaders threatened Russia with further sanctions if there was no progress in halting the fighting in Ukraine.
France’s foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot has said he is working with US senator Lindsey Graham, a leading ally of Mr Trump, on a potential new package of “devastating” sanctions to “asphyxiate once and for all the Russian economy” with 500 per cent import tariffs on Russian oil and the countries that buy it.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Saturday that European allies, “together with the US”, were “calling Putin out”, as the pressure increases on Russia to accept an unconditional ceasefire.
Sir Keir said that allies would “ramp up sanctions” if the Russian president “turns his back on peace”, as he and allies backed plans for a 30-day ceasefire.
Former vice chief of staff for the US Army, retired general Jack Keane, accused Putin of “stalling” peace talks to gain concessions.
Gen Keane told Fox News on Wednesday: “In my own line, Putin is using that talk to stall, that’s his motivation here, and trying to get more concessions.”
“I think Russia has made up its mind, they’re not going to agree any permanent ceasefire any day soon, they’re going to treat going down as hard line, and they want to get concessions which are pretty unreasonable for Ukraine.
“They want Zelensky to be gone, they want to change the constitution, they want to demilitarise Ukraine’s military, they will not accept any peacekeepers in the nation if there is a peace deal, and the list goes on.”
