Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul on Friday at their first direct peace talks in more than three years, under pressure from US President Donald Trump to end Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War Two. Live television showed Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan addressing Russian and Ukrainian negotiators at the lavish Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus. Half of the Ukrainian delegation wore camouflage military fatigues, sitting at a table directly facing their Russian counterparts, who were in suits. Fidan said it was critical to achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible. He said he was happy to see the will of both sides to open a new window of opportunity for peace, and it was important that the Istanbul talks form the basis for a meeting between leaders of the two countries. \u201cThere are two paths ahead of us: one road will take us on a process that will lead to peace, while the other will lead to more destruction and death. The sides will decide on their own, with their own will, which path they choose,\u201d Fidan said. The warring sides had not met face-to-face since March 2022, the month after Russia\u2019s invasion. Expectations for a major breakthrough, already low, were dented further on Thursday when Trump, winding up a Middle East tour, said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin. The head of Ukraine\u2019s delegation, setting out Kyiv\u2019s priorities, said peace was only possible if Russia agreed to a 30-day ceasefire, the return of abducted Ukrainian children and an exchange of all prisoners of war. Russia says it wants to end the war by diplomatic means and is ready to discuss a ceasefire. But it has raised a list of questions and concerns, saying Ukraine could use a pause to rest its forces, mobilise extra troops and acquire more western weapons. Ukraine and its allies accuse Putin of stalling and say he is not serious about wanting peace. Putin stays away It was Putin who proposed the direct talks in Turkiye, but he spurned a challenge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet him there in person, instead sending a team of mid-level officials. Ukraine responded by naming negotiators of similar rank. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump\u2019s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg were also in Istanbul, where a flurry of separate diplomatic contacts took place earlier today. Rubio told reporters on Thursday night that, based on the level of the negotiating teams, a major breakthrough was unlikely. \u201cI hope I\u2019m wrong. I hope I\u2019m 100 per cent wrong. I hope tomorrow the news says they\u2019ve agreed to a ceasefire; they\u2019ve agreed to enter serious negotiations. But I\u2019m just giving you my assessment, honestly,\u201d he said. Russia said today it had captured another village in its slow, grinding advance in eastern Ukraine. Minutes before the start of the Istanbul meeting, Ukrainian media reported an air alert and explosions in the city of Dnipro. Russia says it sees the talks 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\u2019s initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine\u2019s military. Zelenskiy\u2019s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Russian attempts to align the current talks with the unsuccessful earlier negotiations would fail. 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. Mutual hostility Ukraine repelled Russia\u2019s initial assault on the capital Kyiv in 2022 and recaptured swathes of land seized by the Russians in the war\u2019s first year. But since then, Russian forces have slowly but relentlessly advanced for most of the past two years. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been wounded or killed on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, whole cities have been destroyed and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. Moscow says it was forced to mount its \u201cspecial military operation\u201d in response to Nato expansion and the prospect that the western alliance would admit Ukraine as a member and use it as a launchpad to attack Russia. Any settlement of the conflict must address these \u201croot causes\u201d, the Kremlin says. Kyiv and its allies reject that as a false pretext for what they call an imperial-style land grab. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine\u2019s army chief, said late on Thursday that Russia has about 640,000 troops in Ukraine at the moment and had \u201cturned its aggression against Ukraine into a war of attrition\u201d. He said there was active combat along the entire frontline, stretching many hundreds of miles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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