{"id":74582,"date":"2025-05-16T13:50:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T08:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/?p=74582"},"modified":"2025-05-16T13:50:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T08:50:34","slug":"russia-and-ukraine-to-hold-first-direct-peace-talks-in-over-3-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/world\/russia-and-ukraine-to-hold-first-direct-peace-talks-in-over-3-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia and Ukraine to hold first direct peace talks in over 3 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL(REUTERS): Russian and Ukrainian<\/a> 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<\/a> to end Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War Two.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0and\u00a0Russia\u2019s\u00a0President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Turkish Foreign Ministry sources said a meeting between Turkish, US\u00a0and\u00a0Ukrainian officials would take place at 0745 GMT, followed by\u00a0talks\u00a0between Turkish,\u00a0Russian\u00a0and\u00a0Ukrainian delegations at 0930 GMT.<\/p>\n

Putin on Sunday proposed\u00a0direct\u00a0talks\u00a0with\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0in Turkey, but has spurned a challenge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet him in person,\u00a0and\u00a0instead has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to the\u00a0talks.<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy said Putin\u2019s decision not to attend but to send what he called a \u201cdecorative\u201d lineup showed the\u00a0Russian leader was not serious about ending the\u00a0war.\u00a0Russia\u00a0accused\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0of trying \u201cto put on a show\u201d around the\u00a0talks.<\/p>\n

Russia\u00a0says it sees them as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the early weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul.<\/p>\n

But the terms under discussion then, when\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0was still reeling from\u00a0Russia\u2019s initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand\u00a0by Moscow for large cuts to the size of\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of\u00a0Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions\u00a0and\u00a0become a neutral country.<\/p>\n

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

USA Representative<\/h2>\n

The US State Department\u2019s director of policy planning, Michael Anton, will represent the US in the talks, said a state department spokesperson.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Russian delegation is headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky\u00a0and\u00a0includes a deputy defence minister, a deputy foreign minister\u00a0and\u00a0the head of military intelligence.<\/p>\n

Zelenskiy said on Thursday his team would be led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov\u00a0and\u00a0include the deputy heads of\u00a0Ukraine\u2019s its intelligence services, the deputy chief of the military\u2019s general staff\u00a0and\u00a0the deputy foreign minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL(REUTERS): 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\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War Two. The encounter at the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus is a sign of diplomatic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":74583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[532,2547],"class_list":["post-74582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74584,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74582\/revisions\/74584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}