Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said the only chance for peace in Ukraine was a direct meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Antalya, Mr Rubio also said he did not expect breakthroughs in the talks between Ukraine and Russia, which sent a low-level delegation to Istanbul.
“It’s my assessment that I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until the President (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic,” he said.
“I want to be frank…we don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow.”
Mr Rubio was echoing earlier comments from Mr Trump that only he can stop the war by meeting his Russian counterpart.
“I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
Vladimir Putin has sacked the chief of Russia’s military land forces, General Oleg Salyukov, according to a decree published by the Kremlin.
It is the latest removal of a high-profile figure from Russia’s military establishment amid its offensive on Ukraine.
Salyukov, 70, will now work as a deputy to ex-defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who was removed from his post last year and made Secretary of the Security Council.
Vladimir Putin “personally disrespected” Donald Trump by sending such a “low-level” delegation to peace talks in Istanbul, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
“I believe the US and Turkey, they feel Russia’s disrespect, in my opinion,” Mr Zelensky told a press conference in Ankara.
“No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation, that is personal disrespect…to Erdogan and Trump. Trump sent a big team of people.”
The Ukrainian president decided to skip negotiations in Turkey after his Russian counterpart refused to show, and will instead send his defence minister to meet the Russian delegation in Istanbul.
It came after Donald Trump said there will be no peace in Ukraine until he meets with Putin.
“I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
Marco Rubio, who is currently in Antalya, has said the US did not have high expectations for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
The US secretary of state said the best chance of a breakthrough was a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
“It’s my assessment that I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until the President (Trump) and President Putin interact directly on this topic,” Mr Rubio said.
“I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m 100% wrong,” he added. “I hope the news tomorrow morning is there’s a ceasefire. But it’s not my assessment.”
It has just gone 7pm in Istanbul on a day that might have been among the most consequential in recent diplomatic history.
A meeting between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, in the grand setting of the Dolmabahçe Palace overlooking the Bosphorus, would have had shades of that other famous get-together in Ukraine 80 years ago: The Yalta Conference of 1945.
But instead of an encounter that could have shaped the future of Europe, the world has instead spent the day playing “Where’s Vladimir”. The Russian president, it turned out, was busy meeting the head of one of the country’s banks and dealing with “non-public matters”. The Kremlin says he has spent a “calm” day.
You might have thought Putin’s failure to show up at the very talks he had insisted on calling in lieu of the 30-day ceasefire Mr Trump had demanded might have irked the US president.
That was clearly what Mr Zelensky hoped when he accused Putin of showing “personal disrespect” to the American leader. “We can’t be running around the world looking for Putin,” he added in exasperation.
European leaders were also confident that Mr Trump’s patience must surely finally have run out. Johann Wadephul, Germany’s brand new foreign minister, declared that there was now full agreement with the US on the need for much more draconian sanctions, declaring “the USA and Europe are on the same page.”
Yet any expectations of a change in tone were swiftly dashed, with Mr Trump resolutely refusing to issue even the mildest criticism of his Russian counterpart.
“I’m not disappointed,” he said. “Why would I be disappointed? Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together, okay!”
Mr Trump, having expressed his hopes just 24 hours earlier that both he and Putin would be in Istanbul today, seemed to regard the idea that the Russian president might have attended the talks as ridiculous. “Obviously he wasn’t going to go,” he said.
When the two get together is anyone’s guess. So what happens in the meantime? Not a lot, by all accounts. Mr Zelensky has poured scorn on the Russian delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky, the former culture minister, as “low-level” and “decorative”.
Mr Medinsky’s team insist they are there to negotiate, but have made it clear they intend to take as their starting point the Istanbul Communiqué issued after aborted talks in the same city two years ago. Given that this required Ukraine to abandon its Nato ambitions and accept neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees that could be vetoed at any time by Russia, it hardly seems the most encouraging basis for a breakthrough.
Time is running out for anything to get underway today, but even if there is a preliminary meeting, there seems little reason for optimism that an end to Ukraine’s war is in sight.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, is expected to address journalists in Antalya after a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Turkey.
The UK’s defence secretary said that Ukraine’s allies “need to act, we need to put pressure on Putin” after the Russian leader failed to show for talks in Istanbul.
Speaking after a meeting with German counterpart Boris Pistorius in Berlin, John Healey urged further sanctions on Russia, adding: “We need to put pressure on Putin that helps bring him to the negotiating table.”
Moscow sees today’s talks with Ukraine as a “continuation” of failed negotiations in 2022 at the start of its invasion, Russia’s delegation head Vladimir Medinsky said this afternoon.
Mr Medinsky insisted the Kremlin had the “necessary competencies” for the the negotiations and said Russia was willing to make compromises.
“We consider these talks as the continuation of the Istanbul peace process that was unfortunately broken off by the Ukrainian side,” he told reporters, adding that Russia’s delegation will “look for possible solutions and points of contact”.
Away from potential peace negotiations in Turkey, life goes on in Kyiv, where a Ukrainian child has been pictured walking past a destroyed Russian tank in the centre of Kyiv.
Volodymyr Zelensky’s press conference in Ankara has now ended.
Here’s what we learnt:
Volodymyr Zelensky has once again told Vladimir Putin that he is ready for direct negotiations.
“Unfortunately, they are not serious enough about the negotiations,” the Ukrainian president told reporters in Ankara, before appealing to Putin: “I am here, we are ready for direct negotiations.”
Mr Zelensky later said that a meeting with Putin may not be necessary if their respective delegations agree a ceasefire during talks in Istanbul today.
The Ukrainian president told a press conference in Ankara that if Moscow failed to show any willingness to engage in ceasefire talks, more sanctions should be imposed.
“Russia does not feel that it needs to end (the war), which means there is not enough political, economic and other pressure on the Russian Federation,” Mr Zelensky said.
“And so we ask, if there is no ceasefire, if there are no serious decisions … we ask for appropriate sanctions.”
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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump-Putin meeting ‘only chance for peace’ – The Telegraph
