SETTING THE TONE
Russia continued its attacks in the hours ahead of the talks, with Kyiv saying Moscow’s shelling on Friday morning killed a woman in the frontline town of Kupiansk.
Kyiv also said another woman in her 50s was killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region, while Moscow said it downed 65 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Trump, who is keen to push Russia and Ukraine towards a peace settlement, said it was “obvious” Putin would never attend the talks.
“Obviously he wasn’t going to go,” he told reporters.
“He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there.”
Setting the tone ahead of the meeting, Zelenskyy on Thursday said Russia had sent a “dummy” delegation, while Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the Ukrainian president a “clown” and “loser”.
Outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Medinsky told reporters that Russia saw the talks as a continuation of failed 2022 negotiations and that he was ready for “possible compromises”.
“The delegation is committed to a constructive approach, to finding possible solutions and points of contact. The goal of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is to eventually establish long-term peace by eliminating the root causes of the conflict,” he said.
Zelenskyy said a ceasefire was his team’s top priority for the talks.
After a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Zelenskyy said that Russia was “not taking the real negotiations very seriously” but that he was sending a high-level delegation “out of respect” for Erdogan and Trump.
“AVOIDING PEACE”
Rubio said he would meet in Istanbul with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga and that a lower-level US official would meet the Russians.
Ahead of the planned talks, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Putin “must pay the price for avoiding peace” as he prepared to attend a European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Albania on Friday.
The EPC, which brings together the members of the European Union and 20 other countries, was established in 2022 on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Starmer and Macron will be joined by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO chief Mark Rutte and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.
Kyiv and its European allies had called for Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire before any negotiations, but Moscow rejected the proposal.
Russia wants Ukraine to make massive territorial concessions, giving up even more land than it has lost on the battlefield, and has also at times sought the removal of Zelenskyy, pledges of military neutrality and limits on Ukraine’s army.
Kyiv and the West reject those calls but Zelenskyy has conceded that Ukraine might only get back some territory through diplomatic means.
