May 15, 2025 - Zelensky to send Ukrainian team to Istanbul for Russia peace talks

Our live coverage of the Ukraine-Russia peace talks has ended for the day. For the latest updates, read through the posts below.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the members of press, following NATO foreign ministers' informal meeting, in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the timeline for a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin probably won’t be set until Trump returns from his overseas trip.

“On the timeline of it, the president will have to determine that,” Rubio said at a news conference Thursday.

“We’ll have to figure out how to operationalize that,” Rubio said. “So probably we will wait till he finishes with his trip because the president’s still overseas.”

“We’ll wait to see what happens tomorrow, and then those decisions will be made about a timeline and when, where those meetings would happen,” he said.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to members of press in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would not attend talks with Russia on Friday and said he does not expect a breakthrough in the negotiations over the war in Ukraine until Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet “face to face.”

“We don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow,” Rubio said in a press gaggle in Antalya, Turkey, but said he hoped to be proven wrong.

Rubio said he would meet Friday with the Ukrainian foreign minister and a Ukrainian delegation and “someone from our team will be involved in the Russia talks.”

“I was going to be here anyways, obviously,” for a NATO meeting, Rubio noted, “but we came because we were told that there might be a direct engagement between the Russians and the Ukrainians.”

“That was originally the plan. You all heard the same thing. That was not to be the case. Or if it is, it’s not at the levels we had hoped it would be at. I hope I’m wrong,” he said.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until the president (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic,” Rubio added, reflecting comments made by Trump.

Turkish security personnel stand alert at the entrance to Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, where direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations are expected to take place on Thursday.

Highly anticipated talks between Russia and Ukraine – two countries locked in a bloody conflict for more than a decade – could still take place in Turkey on Thursday, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin chose to skip the summit.

The Kremlin announced Thursday that Putin would not travel to Turkey after days of speculation he could show up for a meeting with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine are currently in Turkey, although there has been no official confirmation on when or whether they would meet.

Here is what we do – and don’t – know:

Will talks happen on Thursday? The Russian state news agency Tass reported earlier Thursday the talks were set to start in Istanbul at 10 a.m. local time, a report that was dismissed by the Ukrainians as “fake news.”

The spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, then said the meeting was postponed to the afternoon – a statement disputed by the hosts, the Turkish government, which said no talks were officially scheduled and therefore could not have been postponed. By early evening local time, no talks had yet begun.

Who’s in Turkey? The Russian delegation is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, Putin’s senior aide and a hardliner who led the Russian side during the last known direct talks between the two countries, in the spring of 2022.

The makeup of that Russian team was derided by Zelensky. “After learning the composition of the Russian delegation, it became clear that they are not approaching real talks seriously,” the Ukrainian president said. “So far, we do not see any real decision-makers among those who arrived.”

But Zelensky said that, “out of respect” for US President Donald Trump and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he would send a high-ranking team. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha headlines that Ukrainian group; Zelensky, who was in the Turkish capital, Ankara, to meet Erdogan earlier Thursday, did not travel on to Istanbul for the talks.

Ukraine’s team also includes deputy heads of the military, intelligence and security services, and the deputy foreign minister, according to a presidential decree.

US presence: Several top US officials are also in Turkey. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived to the coastal city of Antalya on Wednesday, attending an informal meeting of the NATO foreign ministers there.

Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, and his foreign envoy Steve Witkoff plan to be in Istanbul for the talks, a senior Trump administration official said Tuesday, a statement confirmed by another source familiar with the plans.

Trump weighs in: The US president, who urged Zelensky to meet Putin after the Russian leader suggested the talks, told reporters Thursday that when it comes to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, “nothing is going to happen until” he meets with Putin.

How did we get here? Putin called for direct talks at the weekend, having rejected a call from Kyiv and its allies for a 30-day truce. Zelensky quickly said he was ready to meet, following it up by saying he would not meet any Russian official apart from Putin.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to send defense minister Rustam Umerov to meet with a low-level Russian delegation in Istanbul was a difficult choice forced by necessity. Its audience is one man: US President Donald Trump.

Kyiv must show it is willing to take any step at all to foster any kind of peace, or else it risks Trump slowly finding the pro-Kremlin voices around him rising in volume, getting bored of the processes entirely, and/or limiting aid to Ukraine.

But ultimately, the peace process is going exactly how Russia wants it to. Slowly, and with the Kremlin as its scheduler.

The main revelation so far is that the Kremlin is unafraid of further sanctions, of European pressure, and not cajoled by Trump. For now, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the potential domestic pitfalls of a photo opportunity alongside the US president and his Ukrainian enemy to be far greater than the possible damage incurring Trump’s wrath may cause.

His rejection of this initiative is a calculated risk that may already be paying off. Trump’s reaction – to suggest “nothing is gonna happen” until he and Putin meet – throws all expectations for diplomacy to the wind until the pair have a bilateral summit. It permits Putin to pursue any course at liberty, aware the White House head does really believe there can be progress until the two presidents meet in person.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a press conference at the Embassy of Ukraine in Ankara, Turkey on Thursday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he expect more sanctions to be slapped on Russia if Moscow doesn’t take steps to end its war on Ukraine

Ukraine’s European allies and the US President Donald Trump had threatened new sanctions on Russia if it did not sign up to the US-backed proposal for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

Several European countries said they’d impose new “massive” sanctions on Russia if it didn’t stop the fighting by Monday. However, that timeline shifted after it became apparent that the two sides could meet this week.

“Ukraine was moving towards a format that could bring us all a little closer to ending the war. But this cannot be unilateral, only from one side. And pressure cannot be one-sided. That is why we really want to see a (pressure) against Russia and Putin. Sanctions from Europe, the United States, and other countries. At least sanctions,” Zelensky said on Thursday.

Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky, center, speaks to reporters with other members of a Russian delegation ahead of a planned meeting between Ukrainian, American and Russian delegates in Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation in Istanbul and a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said his delegation was “committed to a constructive approach.”

However, he also said that the goal of the direct talks was “to sooner or later establish long-term peace” and “eliminate the basic root causes of the conflict.”

The mention of the “root causes” will be a red flag to the Kyiv. The “root causes” mentioned by Moscow include the existence of Ukraine – formerly part of the Soviet Union – as a sovereign state, and NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War.

Speaking outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Medinsky said Putin held a “special meeting to prepare” the Russian delegation earlier on Thursday, adding that Putin “set the tasks and defined our negotiating position.”

“We consider these negotiations as a continuation of the peace process in Istanbul, which, unfortunately, was interrupted by the Ukrainian side three years ago,” he said, adding that his delegation was approved by Putin and had all the “necessary competencies and powers to conduct negotiations.”

What happened then? The 2022 talks Medinsky was referring to collapsed after it became clear that Russia was essentially demanding Ukraine to capitulate and surrender its sovereignty.

A series of meetings between Russia and Ukraine happened in Istanbul and Belarus in the spring of 2022, when it became clear that Putin’s plan to take over Ukraine and force a regime change in Kyiv was not going to happen, because of the defences mounted by Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukrainian troops began to liberate the areas north of Kyiv, uncovering evidence of atrocities committed by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians there, which hardened Ukraine’s resolve to fight.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that he decided to send a top-level delegation to Istanbul even though Russia sent a lower-level team there “out of respect” for US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“Despite the relatively low level of the Russian delegation, out of respect for President Trump, out of respect for the high level of the Turkish delegation and for President Erdogan, we still want to try to take at least the first steps towards a ceasefire, so I have decided to send our delegation to Istanbul now,” Zelensky said.

“Not everyone will be there, of course, the head of the Security Service and the Chief of the General Staff will not be there. But the delegation will be led by the Minister of Defense. Despite the fact that his counterpart will not be there,” the Ukrainian leader said.

He said his team, headed by the Minister of Defense Rustem Umeron, will have a mandate to negotiate and that a ceasefire is their number one priority.

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Ukraine’s Zelensky confirms he's sending team for Russia peace talks

00:47 • Source: CNN

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky attends a press conference at the Embassy of Ukraine in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv will never recognize parts of Ukraine that are currently occupied as parts of Russia, as he confirmed peace talks are set to go ahead.

“In all discussions – and I emphasize this – and this is my unwavering position – we do not legally recognise any of our temporarily occupied territories as Russian. This is the Ukrainian land,” Zelensky told journalists.

Russia has repeatedly demanded that the four Ukrainian regions that are currently partially under its control, as well as the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea that Moscow illegally annexed in 2014, are recognised as parts of Russia.

The Trump administration has indicated in the past that it believes Ukraine might not be able to get back all of its pre-war territory.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he and the Turkish President Recep Tayyip have agreed that delegations from Turkey, Ukraine and the US will be present in Istanbul, adding that he hopes a meeting will Russian officials takes place.

“Such a meeting will take place. We will definitely hold a meeting with the Russian side. I hope this meeting will take place,” Zelensky told reporters in Ankara, adding he was waiting for the Turks to confirm timings.

“The agenda is clear, we are ready to meet. We are waiting for corresponding signals from the Turkish side, we are waiting for specifics, at what time, today or at what time the groups will meet tomorrow,” he added.

The head of the Russian delegation in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, told Russian state media RIA that Moscow was “ready for discussions.”

“We are ready for discussions, for resuming the Istanbul negotiations; we are prepared for possible compromises and their discussion,” Medinsky said, referring to the last known direct talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in Istanbul in the spring of 2022.

Those talks collapsed after Russia’s demanded what observers said amounted to a capitulation by Ukraine.

Medinsky said his delegation included “senior representatives from all relevant agencies” – a possible response to criticism by Ukrainian President Zelensky over the fact that the Russian President Vladimir Putin decided against traveling to Turkey himself and decided to send a team of technocrats instead of top level diplomats.

Journalists work near Dolmabahce palace where talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations are expected, in Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed a delegation of Ukrainian officials is ready to meet with a Russian delegation in Turkey.

If the meeting goes ahead, this would be the first time officials from the two countries would speak to each other directly since 2022.

Zelensky told reporters that he decided to appoint his Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to head the Ukrainian delegation. Umerov speaks Ukrainian, English, Turkish and Russian.

This post has been updated.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is sending a delegation to Istanbul, a source familiar with the situation told CNN, but it is unclear whether they will meet a Russian team there.

The Ukrainian leader opted against flying there himself after Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to come to the meeting

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has now ended, the Ukrainian presidential office told CNN.

Zelensky said earlier he would decide whether to fly to Istanbul to attend the potential talks between Ukraine and Russia after speaking to Erdogan, but his office has so far not indicated what the Ukrainian leader would do.

Journalists work near Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul, Turkey, on Thursday.

After more than six hours of waiting, with still no meeting scheduled, according to Turkey, dozens of journalists remained camped out at the Dolmabahçe Palace, cigarettes and coffees in hand, clustered around pockets of shade.

The Russian media, their reporting echoing with the phrase “special military operation” - the Kremlin’s euphemistic term for the invasion of Ukraine - seem to be taking their cue from the Kremlin, and waiting for Ukraine to make the next move.

“Waiting is better than knowing the result” joked Stanislav Ivashchenko, a correspondent for Zvezda, a TV channel owned by Russia’s defense ministry.

He believes Erdogan is trying to convince Zelensky right now in Ankara to come to the table. No mention of Russia’s continued rejections of the US-backed ceasefire that Ukraine had wanted to be in force before talks began.

And yet Ivashchenko does want to believe this chaotic tangle of tripods overlooking the Bosphorus could be part of the beginning of the end of the war.

“Western media thinks Russia is interested in war,” he told CNN. “Everyone’s tired of this.”

But, he said, “we want to defend our position.”

U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters aboard Air Force One, en-route to Abu Dhabi, on Thursday.

President Donald Trump told reporters that when it comes to peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, “nothing is going to happen until” he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Nothing’s gonna happen until Putin and I get together, ok? And obviously — he wasn’t going to go. He was going to go, but he thought I was going. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there and I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we’re going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he landed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Trump added that he was not disappointed that the Russian delegation sent to Turkey Thursday for high-level talks with Ukraine did not include Putin: “I’m not disappointed in anything.”

He continued, “I’m not disappointed. Why would I be? We just took in $4 trillion, and you’re disappointed about a delegation? I know nothing about a delegation, I haven’t even checked.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he won’t meet with any Russian representatives in Turkey besides Putin. He called the delegation who showed up Thursday “phony.”

Trump indicated earlier Thursday that a trip to Turkey could still be on the table, keeping the option open even after top officials said there were no plans to do so.

“If something happened, I’d go on Friday if it was appropriate,” he said during a business roundtable in Doha.

Trump had vowed to end Russia’s war in Ukraine on his first day in office, a resolution that has proven elusive. Since then, he has said he was exaggerating.

Ukrainian rescuers and municipal services workers dismantling a residential building destroyed on May 7 by a high-explosive aerial bomb in the frontline city of Kostyantynivka, Donetsk.

While diplomacy - perhaps - takes place in Turkey, Russian troops continue their assaults on Ukrainian positions across the frontline, with further small advances recorded in recent days.

Most Russian effort remains in the Donetsk region, one of four regions in the east of Ukraine that Putin has targeted for total capture, and much to the alarm of Kyiv, areas the US has suggested Ukraine could cede in a peace deal.

According to Ukraine’s General Staff, almost half of Russian attacks on Wednesday took place around the town of Pokrovsk, once a key garrison town, but now too close to Russian positions to be used as a barracks and a logistics hub.

Ukraine’s Deep State analysis group shows Russian forces extending their reach further there and consolidating control over a key supply route linking Pokrovsk with Kostiantynivka to the northeast.

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the area told CNN they were finding it difficult to get to their artillery positions because Russian drone activity was so high.

Elsewhere in Donetsk, Putin’s forces continue to focus assaults westwards toward the town of Lyman. Russia’s Ministry of Defense reports the capture of the nearby settlement of Torske, which would mean Russian troops have crossed the Zherebets river, though this has not been confirmed by Ukraine.

Small gains: But despite there being clear evidence of a major Russian build-up of forces several dozens of kilometers back from front lines - which Ukrainians say calls into question Putin’s commitment to peace - progress by Russia on the battlefield remains slow. Even in the most active area of combat – in the southwest of Donetsk region - its forces have advanced less than 50 km (31 miles) in the last twelve months.

Ukraine, meanwhile, says it is still pursuing the ground war inside Russia.

“We are continuing our active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions – we are proactively defending Ukraine’s border areas,” President Zelensky said in his nightly address Wednesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a statement to the media at the Kremlin on Sunday.

However the extraordinary diplomatic hide-and-seek plays out in Turkey, there is, at the time of writing, one key takeaway.

The Kremlin is unafraid of further sanctions, of European pressure, and is not cajoled by President Donald Trump. Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the potential domestic pitfalls of a photo opportunity alongside the US leader and his Ukrainian enemy to be far greater than the possible damage that incurring Trump’s wrath may cause.

And it is a decision that may already have paid off. Trump’s first reaction to the Kremlin’s abject refusal to attend the direct talks it itself suggested – but that Zelensky turned into a face-to-face with Putin – was to insist he never anticipated the Russian leader would go if he did not, and even to hold out another 24 hours for any possible meeting to happen.

Could it all come together in a hurry for Friday?

Nothing is impossible. But it does seem as though Moscow has made its decision. The team it sent to Istanbul was at a lower technical level, not even matching the seniority of the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who is in country now. The timetable and formats Putin proposed at the weekend is what Russia is adhering to. By refusing to spell out who it would send, the Kremlin held out the suggestion Putin might go for over three days. It could have been bargaining for a bilateral with Trump, or explicit conditions or concessions ahead of a presidential summit, or perhaps it had absolutely no intention of attending. We may never know.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, center, arrives at Esenboga airport in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday.

Zelensky now faces an awkward choice. He must stay in Turkey long enough to ensure Trump knows he was serious about a meeting, but not long enough to be seen to be waiting for the Kremlin. He must either dismiss Russia’s Istanbul initiative as too little too late, or engage with it and hence start an entirely new track in peace talks that have led almost nowhere in over three months.

Trump also faces a tough call. He can no longer kick the can down the road of whether Moscow faces consequences. Putin has flatly rejected both the demand for a 30-day ceasefire, and face-to-face diplomacy with Trump as an intermediary. The “massive sanctions” that French President Emmanuel Macron warned of are the only consistent response available to the White House. But the first signs in Qatar from Trump are he might be reticent to call the push for peace a bust. It is probably the most important decision he’ll make over this conflict.

Military delegations from Turkey, Russia, Ukraine and UN officials attend a meeting to discuss shipment of Ukrainian grain stuck due blockade of Black Sea ports, on July 13, 2022, at Kalender Pavilion in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Turkish government said earlier this week that it was prepared to provide “all kinds of support, including mediation and hosting negotiations, to achieve peace” in Ukraine.

Turkey has played the role of the bridge between Moscow and Kyiv in the past, most notably when it brokered the Black Sea Grain Initiative which guarantees the safe passage of Ukrainian ships carrying food exports – a rare diplomatic success in the brutal conflict. Russia withdrew from the pact in 2023.

As a NATO member, Turkey is invested in the conflict, but it is also seen as more amenable to Russia, with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously hailing his “special relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Presidential Complex in Ankara, Turkey, on Friday.

Talks between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are now underway in Ankara, Ukrainian and Turkish officials say.

Zelensky earlier said he would decide whether to fly to Istanbul for talks with a Russian delegation after the meeting.