Russian-Ukrainian negotiations will start in Istanbul on Thursday, 15 May. They will be the first direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev since the spring of 2022, when the parties attempted to reach a ceasefire agreement during the first weeks of the war. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in dialogue since early 2025 under pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration – but so far it has been indirect, with representatives of the warring countries meeting separately with the Americans. US representatives will also come to Turkey – but it is still unclear whether they will be directly present at the meetings between the Russians and Ukrainians.
Late in the evening of 14 May, the Kremlin published Vladimir Putin’s order on the composition of the Russian delegation for talks with Ukraine. It was headed by his aide Vladimir Medinsky. Putin himself will not be present at negotiations in Turkey.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his willingness to fly to Turkey as soon as Putin offered to negotiate. The Ukrainian president is set to negotiate a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on an’all for all’ basis. Zelenskyy mentioned that he is ready to talk directly from the Russian side only with Putin. In the meantime, Zelenskyy first flew to Ankara, and not Istanbul, where he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andriy Sibiga, is already on his way to Turkey – he flew to Antalya to join the informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the European allies.
From the USA, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff will come to Turkey. Rubio and Witkoff will fly to Istanbul on 16 May – not the 15th. Donald Trump has said he is also willing to come to Istanbul. But, as Kellogg clarified, that would only happen if Putin travelled there. Trump is now on a trip to the Middle East, which is scheduled to end on 15 May in the United Arab Emirates.
The talks were planned in less than a week – back in early May, neither Moscow, Kiev, nor Washington publicly talked about such plans. On 8 May, just after Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada ratified a mineral agreement with the United States, Trump once again recalled his initiative for a 30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to begin negotiations. Putin had previously stated that he agreed to such a truce, ‘but there are nuances.’ On the night of 11 May, Putin proposed that Ukraine begin talks in Istanbul (the Russian side is positioning them as a continuation of those that were broken off in 2022). At the same time, the Russian president did not mention a ceasefire during the talks.
While negotiating in Istanbul in 2022, Russia and Ukraine nearly signed a peace agreement. Its terms, which had not been signed, were drafted on 15 April.Two years later, the text was published in the US media. The document envisaged a ban on Ukraine joining NATO and a reduction of its armed forces in exchange for security guarantees from the US, UK, France, China and Russia. Ukraine was required to pledge not to try to regain Crimea militarily, while the status of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics was to be the subject of separate negotiations between Putin and Zelenskyy.
