Kyiv and Moscow will table documents outlining their visions for a peace agreement during negotiations in Turkiye. Russia and Ukraine continued to exchange air attacks overnight as they geared up to engage in a second round of face-to-face peace talks in Turkiye.
Ukraine’s delegation came to Istanbul on Monday, even though Kyiv had hinted at a possible refusal to participate in the sequel to the initial round of negotiations between the enemies last month, during which there was limited movement towards a halt in the conflict in the war, initiated by Russia when it invaded its neighbour in February 2022.
The Russian negotiators also confirmed they had arrived in the Turkish city, where Kyiv and Moscow – pressured by the United States – are due to submit respective memorandums on terms of peace.
The first series of talks concluded with only a prisoner exchange agreed, with Ukraine grumbling that Russia was still making unacceptable and unrealistic demands.
Russia has stood firm against pressure to forward its memorandum to Kyiv ahead of schedule. But presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, Moscow’s chief negotiator, was cited by the TASS news agency as saying the Kremlin had received Ukraine’s offer.
Kyiv, reports the Reuters news agency, has tabled a blueprint for permanent peace, with no limits on its military power and no international acceptance of Russian control over territories in Ukraine, terms Moscow has demanded to impose.
As the delegations were arriving in Turkiye, Ukrainian officials were preoccupied with coordinating with European allies, who are looking to drum up support for Kyiv in the face of uncertainty about the reliability of the US under President Donald Trump.
Before their meeting with the Russians, the Ukrainian delegation met with representatives of Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
At roughly the same time, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, for a meeting with the leaders of NATO’s eastern and Nordic members, some of Kyiv’s strongest supporters during the Russian invasion.
“If Ukraine doesn’t attend the NATO summit, it will be a Putin victory, but not a victory over Ukraine, but a victory over NATO,” he said last week, addressing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
