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Marco Rubio doesn’t have ‘high expectations’ of breakthrough unless Trump and Putin speak directly
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Ukraine and Russia are set to hold the first direct talks in more than three years after Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed a delegation led by defence minister Rustem Umerov to meet Moscow’s team in Istanbul.
Mr Zelensky confirmed he was sending the senior delegation to meet Moscow’s second-tier team after it became clear Russian president Vladimir Putin had snubbed his Ukrainian counterpart’s challenge to meet him face to face in Turkey, dashing hopes of a breakthrough.
However, US president Donald Trump said no movement should be expected unless he and Mr Putin “get together”.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio echoed that view, telling reporters that Washington “didn’t have high expectations” for the talks in Istanbul.
At a press conference in Ankara on Thursday, Mr Zelensky hit out at the level of the Russian delegation, saying it proved Moscow was not serious about peace.
“Russia does not feel that it needs to end the war, which means there is not enough political, economic and other pressure on the Russian Federation,” Mr Zelensky said, asking for “appropriate sanctions”.
He had earlier accused Moscow of sending “stand-in props” for talks and challenged Mr Putin to “demonstrate his leadership” and meet him directly.
The Russian team is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, who also led the 2022 negotiations for his country.
A meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is “imminent”, according to White House aide Sebastian Gorka.
Mr Gorka, a long an ally of the US president who serves as his deputy assistant and as a senior director for counter-terrorism, stressed the importance of “halting the bloodshed” as a critical round of diplomacy begins in Turkey.
“Deals are all about timing. When the time is right, that’s when the president is in the room with Putin,” Mr Gorka said at a Security Summit, according to Politico.
He said that the moment is “imminent”, without giving details on what that might mean.
Ukraine and Russia are set to hold their first face-to-face peace negotiations in three years, with discussions expected to take place in Istanbul across multiple formats.
A source from the Turkish foreign ministry confirmed that talks would unfold in “different formats”, with trilateral meetings between Ukraine, Russia and Turkey scheduled. Separate discussions involving the United States, Ukraine and Turkey are also under consideration, reported the Telegraph.
“It has not been finalised whether there will be a quadrilateral format,” the source added, indicating that a four-way meeting remains uncertain at this stage.
The upcoming talks are being closely watched, though hopes for a significant breakthrough remain low.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Thursday, “Washington didn’t have high expectations” for the negotiations.
Turkey will take part in two trilateral meetings today in Istanbul as part of renewed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine, Turkish foreign ministry sources told Reuters.
A meeting between Turkish, US and Ukrainian officials is scheduled to take place at 07.45am GMT, followed by talks between Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian delegations at 09.30am GMT, the sources said.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has said Vladimir Putin “must pay the price for avoiding peace”.
In a statement ahead of European Political Community (EPC) summit in Albania on Friday, he said: “Putin’s tactics to dither and delay, while continuing to kill and cause bloodshed across Ukraine, (are) intolerable.”
The EPC participants are expected to mount pressure on the Kremlin, with Sir Keir saying: “A full, unconditional ceasefire must be agreed and if Russia is unwilling to come to the negotiating table, Putin must pay the price.”
Ukraine lost an F-16 fighter jet on Friday morning after an incident on board, though the pilot ejected safely, the Ukrainian air force said in a statement.
“An unusual situation arose on board. The pilot moved the aircraft away from the settlement and successfully ejected,” it said on Telegram, without giving details.
The air force said the pilot was feeling fine.
It indicated that the crash did not appear to be the result of Russian fire and that a commission had been appointed to investigate all circumstances of the incident.
The crash is the second involving an F-16 since Kyiv began receiving the fighter jets from US allies last year as part of a programme approved by the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
In late August 2024, an F-16 crashed and its pilot died while repelling a major Russian air strike.
Ukraine does not disclose the number of aircraft it has received.
Pope Leo XIV met at the Vatican with the head of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine on Thursday, in one of his first audiences as pontiff that reaffirmed his appeal for a peaceful, negotiated end to Russia’s war.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk said he invited Leo to visit Ukraine and presented the pope with a list of prisoners held by Russia.
The Vatican under Pope Francis had worked for prisoner exchanges, as well as for the return of Ukrainian children taken to live in Russian-occupied territories.
The Vatican did not release any statement after the audience, one of the first private audiences held by Leo since his election on 8 May.
In his first Sunday noon blessing as pope, and again during an audience with pilgrims from eastern rite churches this week, Leo has appealed for an end to the war and expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
“I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people…Let everything possible be done to achieve genuine, just and lasting peace as soon as possible. May all the prisoners be freed, and may the children return to their families.”
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said it was “premature” to think of a possible papal visit to Kyiv, which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had also suggested during a first phone call with Leo on Monday.
The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality. Leo has vowed “every effort” to try to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table.
Once they start, the talks will have to address a chasm between the two sides over a host of issues.
Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky is a former culture minister who has overseen the rewriting of history textbooks to reflect Moscow’s narrative on the war.
It includes a deputy defence minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence.
Key members of the team, including its leader, were also involved in the last direct peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022 – and Mr Medinsky confirmed on Thursday that Russia saw the new talks as a resumption of those interrupted three years ago.
“The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is sooner or later to achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict,” said Mr Medinsky.
The terms under discussion in 2022, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia’s initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine’s military.
With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Vladimir 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.
Russia and Ukraine have been wrestling for months over the logistics of ceasefires and peace talks while trying to show Donald Trump they are serious about seeking an end what he calls “this stupid war”.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded on both sides in the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War 2. Washington has threatened repeatedly to abandon its mediation efforts unless there is clear progress.
Asked if Vladimir Putin would join talks at some future point, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “What kind of participation will be required further, at what level, it is too early to say now.”
Russia said on Thursday its forces had captured two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
A spokesperson for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment last year that Ukraine was “getting smaller” in the absence of an agreement to stop fighting.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian president’s decision not to attend but to send what he called a “decorative” lineup showed the Vladimir Putin was not serious about ending the war.
Russia accused Ukraine of trying “to put on a show” around the talks.
“We can’t be running around the world looking for Putin,” Mr Zelensky said after meeting Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.
“I feel disrespect from Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation – this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump,” Mr Zelensky told reporters.
Mr Zelensky said he would also not go to Istanbul and that his team’s mandate was to discuss a ceasefire.
US president Donald Trump said there would be no movement in the Russia-Ukraine peace talks without a meeting between himself and Vladimir Putin.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio later echoed that view, telling reporters in the Turkish resort of Antalya that Washington “didn’t have high expectations” for the Ukraine talks in Istanbul.
Mr Rubio, speaking in Antalya, later echoed that thought: “It’s my assessment that I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until the President (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic.”
Referring to the current state of the talks as a “logjam”, Mr Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul to meet with Turkey’s foreign minister and Ukraine’s delegation on Friday.
The diplomatic disarray was symptomatic of the hostility between the sides and the unpredictability injected by Trump, whose interventions since returning to the White House in January have often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies.
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