Moscow expects to discuss the conditions for a cease-fire with representatives from Kyiv in Istanbul next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Russia has suggested the second batch of talks with Kyiv take place on June 2, but Ukraine officials have said they want to see the Kremlin’s proposals for any deal ahead of despatching its delegation to the Turkish city.
“We hope that both memorandums, the Russian one and the Ukrainian one, will be discussed in the second round of talks, for which Russia’s delegation will be ready in Istanbul on Monday morning,” Peskov said, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
He also confirmed that Moscow’s representatives were heading to Turkey and “will be ready on Monday morning to continue negotiations, the second round of negotiations.”
Peskov further added that Russian President Vladimir Putin was prepared to speak directly with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but only after other negotiations have yielded results.
Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova confirmed on Thursday that Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky would once again head up Moscow’s delegation to Istanbul, having been the top representative at the previous round of talks earlier this month.
Those discussions, the first direct talks in three years, resulted in a sizable prisoner swap and calls for further talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire.
However, there has been little progress since then, with each side blaming the other for prolonging hostilities.
Those accusations persisted today, with Zelenskyy saying that Moscow was working to ensure the proposed talks lead to nothing.
“For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared. Unfortunately, Russia is doing everything it can to ensure that the next potential meeting brings no results,” he said on the social media platform X.
Zelenskyy made the comments following a conversation in Kyiv with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was in Moscow earlier this week as part of Ankara’s drive to act as a mediator between the warring nations.
Fidan told reporters in Kyiv that Turkey not only hoped to host Monday’s talks, but also any potential future discussions between the presidents of the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, according to Turkish outlet Hurriyet.
He said, “We sincerely think that it is possible to cap the first and second direct Istanbul talks with a meeting between Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin, and Mr. Zelensky, under the direction of Mr. Erdogan.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the president of Turkey.
“As long as [the sides] remain at the negotiating table, progress can surely be seen,” Fidan added.
However, Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, appearing alongside his Turkish counterpart at a news conference, echoed his leader’s sentiments, saying Kyiv needed to see Russia’s proposals ahead of the talks for them to be “substantive and meaningful.”
“We want to end this war this year, and we are interested in establishing a truce, whether it is for 30 days, or for 50 days, or for 100 days,” Sybiha said.
He did not elaborate on what action Kyiv would take if it did not receive Moscow’s memorandum before the talks, nor set out a deadline for it to arrive.
The impasse sparked criticism of both the Russian and the Ukrainian leaders from the White House, with Trump accusing Putin of having “gone absolutely crazy” and “needlessly killing a lot of people” in a Truth Social post on May 25.
In the same social media post, Trump also criticized Zelenskyy, saying the latter was “doing his country no favors by talking the way he does.”
He also added that the war would never have started if he had been president at the time it broke out in 2022.
