Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators to take place in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 15.
Speaking at a press conference on May 11, the Russian president called on the Ukrainian government in Kyiv to take up its offer to start direct negotiations to end the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war after more than three years of fighting.
As he issued this call for talks, Putin accused the Ukrainian side of abandoning a set of peace talks that both sides entered into shortly after Russian forces marched into Ukraine in 2022.
“It was not Russia that broke off negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv. Nevertheless, we are proposing that Kyiv resume direct negotiations without any preconditions,” Putin said.
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine followed years of lower-level fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region between Ukrainian government-aligned forces and pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists supported by Moscow. This earlier conflict emerged after Russia-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled the country in early 2014, in the face of growing civil unrest.
Three days before launching his invasion, Putin recognized the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk as separate from Ukraine. As he announced the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, Putin declared that Russia would protect these two regions.
Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for both sides to settle the conflict, and his administration has acted as an intermediary between them. Efforts to implement even a temporary cease-fire have proved challenging.
Early on, the Trump administration proposed a 30-day total cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. Moscow indicated some interest in the proposal, but has raised questions, and stopped short of accepting the proposal.
Russia and Ukraine also affirmed support for a 30-day moratorium against attacks on one another’s energy facilities but both sides alleged continued attacks.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has warned it will step back from its intermediary role if it didn’t start to see progress from both sides at the negotiating table.
Speaking at a Munich Security Conference event in Washington on May 7, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said the next step in the peace negotiations is for both sides to start talking to each other directly.
“It’s very important for the Russians and Ukrainians to start talking to one another,” Vance said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Saturday. The European leaders demanded that Moscow immediately enter into an unconditional 30-day cease-fire, and threatened to enforce new sanctions on Russia and boost military aid to Ukraine if Moscow refused.
