Russia to attend new talks as Ukraine demands peace outline

Henry Meyer and Volodymyr Verbianyi, Bloomberg News on May 30, 2025

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Russia said it’s sending a delegation to Istanbul on Monday for a second round of talks with Ukraine amid wrangling over Kyiv’s insistence that Moscow outline its peace proposals before any meeting.

The warring sides have tussled over the parameters of negotiations after Turkey hosted the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since the early months of the war on May 16. Moscow didn’t accept a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and used the meeting to repeat its maximalist demands to end its invasion, now in its fourth year.

“Both memorandums, the Russian and Ukrainian ones, as we hope, will be discussed in the second round of talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday, the state news service Tass reported.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv is in favor of pushing forward with negotiations, but has been awaiting a memorandum from Moscow laying out its position before a follow-up meeting takes place — a position the Kremlin said was “unconstructive.”

Turkey said the talks could lead to a wider meeting including U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the idea — “the potential organization of a four-party meeting at the level of the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and the United States” — during a call on Friday.

The U.S. envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, urged Kyiv to attend the gathering in Turkey, at which he said the U.S., UK, France and Germany would also take part on the sidelines with the goal of narrowing the differences. He also urged Moscow to deliver the memorandum.

“You need to show you’re serious,” Kellogg told U.S. network ABC News. Russia’s reported demand for a written pledge that NATO won’t expand further eastwards, including into Ukraine, is a “fair concern,” Kellogg said.

Trump, who this week expressed frustration with Putin over the stalled bid to end the war, has threatened new sanctions after Moscow launched its largest drone barrage of the war.

On Wednesday, he signaled he’d hold off on new penalties to preserve the chance for a deal with Putin. Asked by a reporter if the Russian leader is interested in a peace agreement, Trump responded: “I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks.”

Turkish diplomacy

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan mentioned the four-way meeting during comments earlier Friday in Kyiv.

“We think it may be possible that the Istanbul talks culminate with a meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy” hosted by Erdogan, he said.

Putin is prepared to engage in high-level talks, but only if direct negotiations achieve concrete results, Peskov said, according to Tass.

The Russian leader’s choice of presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky to head Russia’s delegation has damped expectations of a breakthrough.

Medinsky led Russia’s negotiators at a round of talks in Istanbul soon after the 2022 invasion began. That ended in acrimony over Russian demands, including restrictions on the size and scope of Ukraine’s army. Kyiv has denied an assertion from Putin that Ukraine accepted the demands.

The Russian delegation for a second round of Istanbul talks will remain unchanged, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.

Zelenskyy has pressed allied partners for $30 billion this year to boost domestic weapons production.

He also proposed a meeting between himself, Trump and Putin aimed at breaking the deadlock in peace talks. Trump said he would join a hypothetical summit “if necessary.”

Germany this week agreed to provide Ukraine with €5 billion ($5.7 billion) in military aid as part of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s pledge to help Kyiv build long-range weapons to hit targets on Russian territory.

Merz, who has said that there were “absolutely no range limits” on Ukrainian forces making deep strikes into Russian territory, vowed to intensify cooperation with Kyiv as European allies seek to pressure Russia to engage in talks to end the war.

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(With assistance from Aliaksandr Kudrytski.)

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