Russia and Ukraine to Hold First Direct Peace Talks in over 3 Years

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024.  (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
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Russia and Ukraine to Hold First Direct Peace Talks in over 3 Years

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024.  (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will meet in Istanbul on Friday for their first peace talks in more than three years as both sides come under pressure from US President Donald Trump to end Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two.

The encounter at the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus is a sign of diplomatic progress between the warring sides, who had not met face-to-face since March 2022.

But expectations for a major breakthrough, already low, were dented further on Thursday when Trump said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Turkish Foreign Ministry sources said a meeting between Turkish, US and Ukrainian officials would take place at 0745 GMT, followed by talks between Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian delegations at 0930 GMT.

Putin on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Türkiye, but has spurned a challenge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet him in person, and instead has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to the talks.

Zelenskiy said Putin's decision not to attend but to send what he called a "decorative" lineup showed the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war. Russia accused Ukraine of trying "to put on a show" around the talks, Reuters reported.

Russia says it sees them as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the early weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul.

But the terms under discussion then, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia's initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine's military.

With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country.

Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.

The US State Department's director of policy planning Michael Anton will represent the US in the talks, said a state department spokesperson.

The Russian delegation is headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky and includes a deputy defense minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence.

Zelenskiy said on Thursday his team would be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and include the deputy heads of Ukraine's its intelligence services, the deputy chief of the military's general staff and the deputy foreign minister.



Trump Says US Not Offering Iran 'Anything', Not Speaking to Tehran

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation accompanied by US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool/File Photo/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation accompanied by US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool/File Photo/File Photo
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Trump Says US Not Offering Iran 'Anything', Not Speaking to Tehran

FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation accompanied by US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool/File Photo/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation accompanied by US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the White House in Washington, D.C., US June 21, 2025, following US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool/File Photo/File Photo

US President Donald Trump said on Monday he was not speaking to Iran and was not offering the country "anything", and he reiterated his assertion that the United States had "totally OBLITERATED" Tehran's nuclear facilities.

Trump on Friday dismissed media reports that said his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30 billion to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program.