Zelenskyy welcomes the US leader’s offer, demands Putin to also be present in the Turkish city ‘in person’. US President Donald Trump has volunteered to attend the negotiations which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had proposed must take place directly with Ukraine, following criticism of Western “ultimatums” aimed at halting the war between the two Slavic states.
Trump announced on Monday that he was “thinking of actually flying over” to Turkey’s city Istanbul to witness the negotiations scheduled on Thursday. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the effort, but no immediate response had come from Moscow.
All of us from Ukraine would like it if President Trump could be with us at this meeting in Turkey. It is the right concept. A lot can be changed,” Zelenskyy said. Trump openly invited Zelenskyy, after Putin on Sunday suggested the direct talks in response to a refusal of a 30-day ceasefire Ukraine and its Western partners had demanded should precede the talks.
The Ukrainian president asserted that he would, but only if Putin must come in person. His aide Mykhailo Podolyak on Tuesday reaffirmed Zelenskyy’s pledge to sit with Putin but none of the Russian delegation.
The Kremlin made no statement about whether or not Putin will attend Turkiye personally. “We are committed to a serious search for ways of a long-term peaceful settlement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday in a press conference. If Putin and Zelenskyy were to sit down on Thursday, it would be their first in-person encounter since December of 2019.
At the same time, Ukraine reported that its air defence systems shot down all 10 Russian drones that Russia sent overnight on Tuesday. That is the fewest drones that Russia has sent in an overnight attack in several weeks.
The general staff of the Ukrainian army reported that up to 10pm (19:00 GMT) on Monday, there had been 133 battles with Russian troops along the front line since midnight, when the ceasefire called for by European powers was supposed to have taken effect.
Ukraine’s highest commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, was cited by Zelenskyy as stating the heaviest fighting continues to hold the Donetsk area, the centre of the eastern front, and Russia’s west Kursk region, nine months after Kyiv’s forces launched a cross-border raid.
In the meantime, Russia blamed Ukraine for shelling its Belgorod region, with the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov on Tuesday stating that Ukrainian troops deployed 65 drones and over 100 rounds of ammunition to shell his region over the past day.
