ISTANBUL: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would speak to the presidents of Russia and Ukraine on Monday following talks between the two sides at which a Ukrainian official said Moscow’s negotiators voiced new demands before a ceasefire could be agreed.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies preparations were underway for a conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump.
The talks in Turkey on Friday were the first time the sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour.
A senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said Russian negotiators demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all Ukrainian regions claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire.
Trump, writing on Truth Social, said he would speak with Putin to discuss stopping the war at 10 a.m. Eastern (1400 GMT) on Monday.
“THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE ‘BLOODBATH’ THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE,” he wrote.
He said he would speak afterward with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and various members of NATO.
“Hopefully it will be a productive day, a ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war, a war that should have never happened, will end.”
Trump had offered to travel to Turkey for the talks while in the Gulf last week if Putin would also attend, but Putin sent a team of negotiators instead.
The president has been pressuring Putin and Zelenskiy to agree to a ceasefire in the more than three-year-old war.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at Friday’s meeting. The talks lasted only one hour and 40 minutes and yielded an agreement to trade 1,000 prisoners of war on each side. The two countries have not specified when that would happen.
Zelenskiy called on Saturday for stronger sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers in the Sumy region of northeastern Ukraine. “This was a deliberate killing of civilians,” he said.
“Pressure must be exerted on Russia to stop the killings. Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy.”
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, said it struck a military target in Sumy. Its defence ministry said Russian troops had captured another settlement in eastern Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and said he welcomed the “positive role” of the United States in helping to secure a resumption of talks between Russia and Ukraine. A Russian foreign ministry statement quoted Lavrov as saying contacts would continue.
The U.S. State Department said that during the conversation Rubio welcomed the prisoner exchange agreement and emphasised Trump’s call for an immediate ceasefire.
Ukraine and Western governments, including the U.S., have demanded Russia agree to an immediate, unconditional ceasefire lasting at least 30 days.
But the Ukrainian source said Moscow’s negotiators had demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, with a ceasefire to take place only after that.
The source said that and other demands went beyond the terms of a draft peace deal that the United States proposed last month after consultations with Moscow.
Peskov declined to comment on the Ukrainian account, saying talks should be conducted “absolutely behind closed doors”.
He said the next steps would be to carry out the prisoner exchange and conduct further work between the two sides. Peskov said it was possible that Putin could meet Zelenskiy, but only if “certain agreements” were reached, which he did not specify.
Zelenskiy had challenged Putin earlier in the week to meet him in person, an offer the Russian leader ignored.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said his country, after hosting the talks, was resolved to continue its mediation role.
UKRAINE RALLIES SUPPORT
After Friday’s meeting, Ukraine began rallying support from its allies to take tougher action against Moscow.
“Once again Russia is not serious,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Reuters during a visit to Pakistan. “At what point do we say to Putin enough is enough?”
French President Emmanuel Macron also said the talks in Istanbul had been fruitless.
“Today, what do we have? Nothing. And so I tell you, faced with President Putin’s cynicism, I am sure that President Trump, mindful of the credibility of the United States, will react.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU was working on a new package of sanctions against Moscow, which France said this week should aim to “suffocate” the Russian economy.
But after intensifying sanctions for more than three years already, it is unclear how much more they can achieve.
In their efforts to forge a united front and make Putin accept a ceasefire, Ukraine and its European leaders have been repeatedly thrown off balance by interventions from Trump.
Having told Zelenskiy to accept Russia’s offer of direct talks in Turkey, Trump said on the eve of the meeting that there could be no movement on peace until he had met with Putin.
The Kremlin says Putin is ready to meet Trump, but such a summit must be carefully prepared. It said there had been no contact between Russia and the U.S. since Friday’s talks.
-Tom Balmforth
