Site logosite logo All RFE/RL websites. Search the news. Zelenskyy arrives in Turkey ahead of Ukraine-Russia talks, with no sign of Putin. May 15, 2025, 07:34 CET. Updated May 15, 2025, 12:13 CET. By RFE/RL. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have arrived in Turkey for the first straight face-to-face peace talks in over three years, but the teams will be made up of lower-level technocrats after President Vladimir Putin stayed at home. The delegations are set to meet on May 15 at the Site logosite logo All RFE/RL websites. Search the news. Zelenskyy arrives in Turkey ahead of Ukraine-Russia talks, with no sign of Putin. May 15, 2025, 07:34 CET. Updated May 15, 2025, 12:13 CET. By RFE/RL. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have arrived in Turkey for the first straight face-to-face peace talks in over three years, but the teams will be made up of lower-level technocrats after President Vladimir Putin stayed at home. The delegations are set to meet on May 15 at the Site logosite logo All RFE/RL websites. Search the news. Zelenskyy arrives in Turkey ahead of Ukraine-Russia talks, with no sign of Putin. May 15, 2025, 07:34 CET. Updated May 15, 2025, 12:13 CET. By RFE/RL. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have arrived in Turkey for the first straight face-to-face peace talks in over three years, but the teams will be made up of lower-level technocrats after President Vladimir Putin stayed at home. The delegations are set to meet on May 15 at the Site logosite logo All RFE/RL websites. Search the news. Zelenskyy arrives in Turkey ahead of Ukraine-Russia talks, with no sign of Putin. May 15, 2025, 07:34 CET. Updated May 15, 2025, 12:13 CET. By RFE/RL. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to journalists as he arrives at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport on May 15. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have arrived in Turkey for the first straight face-to-face peace talks in over three years, but the teams will be made up of lower-level technocrats after President Vladimir Putin stayed at home. The delegations are set to meet on May 15 at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul and will be held in private without press access, Russian media reported.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, arrived in Ankara despite Putin’s decision not to attend the discussions. Zelenskyy will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Turkish capital but will not participate in the peace negotiations in Istanbul. “We will decide what to do and what steps to take after speaking with President Erdogan. “I believe we will have several hours for an important conversation and to make very important decisions,” Zelenskyy told reporters upon his arrival. “We need to understand the level of the Russian delegation, what its mandate is, and whether they are capable of making any decisions themselves…. Because we all know who makes the decisions in Russia,” he said, referring to the Russian contingent as “decorative.”

Zelenskyy had previously challenged Putin to meet him in Turkey, and the absence of a face-to-face meeting between the two crushed hopes for a major breakthrough in efforts to pause, or halt, fighting in Europe’s longest conflict since World War II. Expectations that US President Donald Trump would attend the talks were crushed when the Kremlin announced that Putin issued an order on May 14 appointing four negotiators and four experts to compose the Russian team. Trump, who is now on a four-day visit to various Middle Eastern countries, had previously stated that he would go provided Putin agreed to participate.

“I know he’d like me to be there, so that’s an option. “If we could end the war, I’d be thinking about it,” he remarked before the Kremlin announcement. US media stated that envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg are still expected in Istanbul. According to the Kremlin announcement, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin, who participated in discussions between the two parties in the weeks following Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, will be one of the negotiators. The group will be led by Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin confidant who participated in the previous round of discussions almost three years ago.

What can peace talks accomplish? Even before it was announced that Putin and Trump would not attend, there was cynicism about the discussions’ chances of success. Linas Linkevicius, Lithuanian Ambassador to Sweden, told Current Time that, while everyone wants a breakthrough, he doesn’t see one because all of the parties’ starting points are so different. “There is no talk about Ukraine’s interests, about [Russia’s] legal responsibility, which is important because all those crimes committed by that country and its leader,” Linkevicius remarked. “You cannot just push it all aside and pretend that we are just doing business from now on.”

Linkevicius also projected that Russia would lecture on the “root causes” of the violence and, once those issues were resolved, may discuss a cease-fire. “In other words, there will be no cease-fire again,” he informed reporters. “They will drag their feet to buy time and in my opinion prepare for a summer military campaign.” Natalia Shavshukova, a Russian independent political scientist, told Current Time that Putin’s true objective was to meet with the US president. “Putin’s only interest is a direct meeting with Trump…. And Ukraine has become an excuse for the two leaders to meet,” Shavshukova said, adding that Putin does not appear to be interested in reaching a peace agreement with Ukraine at this time.

In an interview with Le Monde, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, stated that Putin’s absence from Turkey on May 15 indicates that “Moscow does not want peace and is not ready for serious negotiations.” “We do not trust Russia… But we want to resolve this issue, and we are willing to negotiate in any format,” Yermak told Le Monde. Fighting rages along Ukraine’s northern border as troops cross into Russia.

In an interview with Le Monde, Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president’s office, stated that Putin’s absence from Turkey on May 15 indicates that “Moscow does not want peace and is not ready for serious negotiations.” “We do not trust Russia… But we want to resolve this issue, and we are willing to negotiate in any format,” Yermak told Le Monde. Fighting rages along Ukraine’s northern border as troops cross into Russia.

Andriy Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, has already arrived in Antalya on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, where NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte presided over an informal gathering of the alliance’s foreign ministers. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is expected to participate in the war-ending discussions alongside Witkoff and Kellogg, met with Sybiha on May 14 on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting. Sybiha stated on X that he communicated Zelenkyy’s “vision of further peace efforts” during this “critical week.” He and Rubio “discussed in detail the logic of the next steps and shared our approaches,” he said.