Ukraine to attend peace talks as US says Trump and Putin needed for breakthrough

Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed Ukraine will send a delegation led by the defence minister to meet Russian officials in Istanbul for peace talks, but accused Russia of not treating them seriously.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, he criticised the "low-level" Moscow delegation. Its head, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, insisted the Kremlin team had "all the necessary competencies".

Later on Thursday the top US top diplomat Marco Rubio asserted that Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin needed to meet.

"It's my assessment that I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until President Trump and President Putin interact directly on this topic," he said.

Rubio is also in Turkey after attending a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in the south of the country.

Earlier in the day Trump - who is visiting the Middle East - also suggested that significant progress in peace talks was unlikely until he and Putin met in person.

Asked by the BBC on board Air Force One if he was disappointed by the level of the Russian delegation, he said: "Look, nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together".

"He wasn't going if I wasn't there and I don't believe anything's going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together, but we're going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying," he added.

Trump said he would attend talks in Turkey on Friday if it was "appropriate" and later said he would probably return to Washington on Friday but his destination was unknown as of yet.

The talks had initially been due to take place on Thursday but as of the evening no time for them to take place had been set. Some reports suggest they may now happen on Friday.

Delegations from Turkey, the US, Ukraine and Russia had been due to meet in Istanbul on Thursday for the first face-to-face Ukraine-Russia talks since 2022.

Vladimir Putin proposed direct talks on 15 May in Istanbul in response to a call by European leaders and Ukraine for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

Zelensky then challenged Putin to meet him in person, but on Thursday the Kremlin said that the Russian president was not among officials due to travel.

In Ankara, Zelensky accused Moscow of "disrespect" towards Trump and Erdogan because of the Russian delegation's lack of seniority and reiterated his challenge to the Russian leader to meet him personally.

"No time of the meeting, no agenda, no high-level of delegation - this is personal disrespect to Erdogan, to Trump," he said.

Meanwhile Medinsky told reporters in Istanbul that Russia saw the talks as a "continuation" of failed negotiations in 2022 shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

"The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is to sooner or later reach the establishment of long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict," Medinsky said.

The Istanbul talks mark the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine since the unsuccessful effort in 2022.

Members of Moscow's Turkey delegation were involved in those talks and Russia has indicated it wants to pick up where they left off.

The terms under discussion included demands for Ukraine to become a neutral country, cut the size of its military and abandon Nato membership ambitions - conditions that Ukraine has repeatedly rejected as tantamount to capitulation.

Fighting in Ukraine rages on, with Russia saying its forces had captured two more villages in the eastern Dontesk region on Thursday.

Moscow now controls approximately 20% of Ukraine's territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014.

Meanwhile UK Defence Minister John Healey called on Ukraine's allies to "put pressure on Putin". Speaking after a meeting with German counterpart Boris Pistorius in Berlin on Thursday, Healey urged further sanctions on Russia "to bring him to the negotiating table".