Kremlin: Putin will not attend peace talks in Istanbul

May 15, 2025 - 14:02

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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Istanbul at the peace negotiations on 15 May, BBC reports.

The Kremlin has recently dismissed a US-EU-backed 30-day ceasefire initiative, instead proposing a new round of negotiations in Istanbul. Zelenskyy has accepted the talks and publicly stated he would wait for Putin there, emphasizing that only the Russian president has the authority to make final decisions.

Peskov has reportedly responded negatively to journalists’ questions about whether there was any possibility that Putin would attend the talks in Turkiye.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry has stated that the Russian delegation had arrived in Istanbul for negotiations and was allegedly “ready for serious work.”

It has also added that the talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul have supposedly been postponed to the second half of the day “at Türkiye’s initiative.”

Earlier, Zelenskyy said that Russian ruler Vladimir Putin’s refusal to participate in peace negotiations in Turkiye would be the ultimate signal that Russia does not want to end the war.

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