Kremlin rules out Putin appearance at Ukraine peace talks

There is no chance that Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend this week’s peace talks between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Peskov denied there are plans for a presidential visit, shortly after US President Donald Trump said he mulled going to Türkiye on Friday “if something happened.” Direct negotiations are set to resume later on Thursday.

Putin last week proposed renewing the peace process that was aborted by Kiev in 2022, with Washington calling such contacts the next logical step in its attempts to mediate a truce in the Ukraine conflict.

The 2022 round produced a draft treaty, which offered Ukraine security guarantees in exchange for neutrality and accepting restrictions on its standing army. Kiev later rejected the deal in favour of continuing with warfare, backed by the West.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky responded to Putin’s call by declaring that he would personally fly to Türkiye and demanding that the Russian president did the same. Trump said on Thursday Putin had no reason to go, since the US leader himself didn’t commit to a similar visit.

Moscow has said that its core agenda for the Istanbul talks remain unchanged since 2022, as it believes that a lasting peace can only be achieved by addressing the conflict’s root causes, including Ukraine’s intention to join NATO and Kiev’s discrimination against ethnic Russians.

“[European leaders backing Kiev] will do everything to preserve the nature of this regime,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in April on support for Zelensky. “They could find some new semi-fuhrer … but the essence of the regime would remain.”