Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, “without preconditions” to achieve “lasting peace” and “eliminate the root causes” of the three-year conflict.
The offer, delivered early on Sunday, came hours after the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom called for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
The leaders, who were meeting in Kyiv, said their call is backed by United States President Donald Trump and threatened “massive” new sanctions on Moscow if it did not agree with their plan.
Putin, however, rejected that proposal, slamming European “ultimatums” and “anti-Russian rhetoric”, before outlining the counter-proposal for renewed Russia-Ukraine negotiations.
“We are proposing that Kyiv resume direct negotiations without any preconditions,” the Russian president told reporters. “We offer the Kyiv authorities to resume negotiations already on Thursday, in Istanbul.”
Putin said that he would speak to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later on Sunday about facilitating the talks.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine to the proposal.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously said he was ready for peace talks, but only after a ceasefire is in place.
‘No preconditions’
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022, has left hundreds of thousands of soldiers dead and triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
In the first weeks of the conflict, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held direct talks in Istanbul, but failed to agree to halt the fighting.
Putin said Russia was proposing restarting the talks in an attempt to “eliminate the root causes of the conflict” and “to achieve the restoration of a long-term, lasting peace” rather than simply a pause for rearmament.
“We do not exclude that during these talks we will be able to agree on some new ceasefire,” he added.
Putin, whose forces have advanced over the past year, has faced increased public and private pressure from Trump as well as warnings from European powers to end the war.
But he has offered few concessions and has stood firm in his conditions for ending the war.
In June 2024, Putin said Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia.
Russian officials have also proposed that the US recognise Russia’s control over about one-fifth of Ukraine and demanded that Ukraine remain neutral, though Moscow has said it is not opposed to Kyiv’s ambitions to join the European Union.
Putin specifically mentioned the 2022 draft deal from the talks in Istanbul.
According to the Reuters news agency, that draft deal stipulated that Ukraine should agree to permanent neutrality in return for international security guarantees from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK and the US.
“It was not Russia that broke off negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv,” Putin said.
“Russia is ready to negotiate without any preconditions.”
Russia, Putin added, had proposed several ceasefires, including a moratorium on striking energy facilities, an Easter ceasefire, and most recently, the 72-hour truce during the celebrations marking 80 years since victory in World War II, but accused Ukraine of repeatedly violating the ceasefires.
He said that during the May ceasefire, Ukraine had attacked Russia with 524 aerial drones, 45 sea drones, a number of Western missiles and that Russia had repelled five attacks on Russian regions.
Ukraine, too, has accused Russia of repeatedly violating its own ceasefire.
Trump factor
Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Al Jazeera that both sides were trying to blame each other for failing to agree to a ceasefire deal amid pressure from Trump to end the war.
“Trump has threatened to walk away from the peace process if there isn’t some kind of settlement or agreement on a ceasefire soon. And the question is, who he blames for the failure? If he blames the Russians more, then full US aid will continue to Ukraine, and the sanctions he has threatened will be intensified,” said Lieven.
“If, however, he blames Ukraine more, then, as he’s done once before, he will suspend US aid and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, and that, of course, will drastically weaken Ukraine’s military position and strengthen that of Russia. So both sides are manoeuvring to try to throw blame for any failure onto the other.”
Earlier on Saturday, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the UK travelled together to Ukraine for the first time, in a visit that Zelenskyy said sent “a very important signal”.
The five leaders held a meeting in Kyiv and issued a statement calling for a ceasefire “lasting at least 30 days” from Monday, to make room for a diplomatic push to end the war.
“An unconditional ceasefire by definition cannot be subject to any conditions. If Russia calls for such conditions, this can only be considered as an effort to prolong the war and undermine diplomacy,” the statement read.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the US would take the lead in monitoring the proposed ceasefire, with support from European countries, and threatened “massive sanctions … prepared and coordinated between Europeans and Americans” should Russia violate the truce.
Meanwhile, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, said on Saturday that a “comprehensive” 30-day ceasefire, covering attacks from the air, land, sea and on infrastructure, “will start the process for ending the largest and longest war in Europe since World War II”.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the “bloodbath” of the Ukraine war, which his administration casts as a proxy war between the US and Russia.
Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine portray the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly pledged to defeat Russian forces.
Putin meanwhile casts the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
