Zelenskyy will have face-to-face talks in Istanbul, but will Putin?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will travel to Turkiye this week and wait to have face-to-face talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid intensive pressure from the United States administration and European leaders to find a settlement to end the more than three-year-long war.

Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he will be in Ankara on Thursday to conduct the negotiations. He will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the two will wait for Putin to arrive, he said. Zelenskyy and Erdogan would then both travel to Istanbul.

Putin has not yet said whether he will be at the talks he proposed. Moscow has not directly responded to Zelenskyy’s challenge for Putin to meet him in person at the negotiating table.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov again refused on Tuesday to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else might represent Russia at the potential talks. “As soon as the president considers it necessary, we will make an announcement,” Peskov said. Russia has only said it would send a delegation to Istanbul “without preconditions”.

If Zelenskyy and Putin were to meet on Thursday, it would be their first face-to-face meeting since December 2019. Much has changed since then.

US and European pressure

United States President Donald Trump has urged the two sides to attend as part of Washington’s efforts to stop the fighting. Trump has offered to join the talks himself.

Trump said on Monday he was “thinking about actually flying over” to Istanbul to attend the negotiations. That was welcomed by Zelenskyy, but there was no reaction from Moscow.

“All of us in Ukraine would appreciate it if President Trump could be there with us at this meeting in Turkiye. This is the right idea. We can change a lot,” Zelenskyy said.

Trump publicly asked Zelenskyy to attend, after Putin on Sunday proposed the direct talks following a rejection of a 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine and its Western allies insisted should come first.

The Ukrainian leader said he would, but that Putin should also attend in person. On Tuesday, his adviser Mykhailo Podolyak reiterated that Zelenskyy would only meet Putin and no other members of the Russian delegation.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pressed again for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire on Tuesday. “We are waiting for Putin’s agreement,” he said.

“We agree that, in case there is no real progress this week, we then want to push at European level for a significant tightening of sanctions … We will focus on further areas, such as the energy sector and the financial market,” Merz added.

He welcomed Zelenskyy’s readiness to travel to Istanbul, “but now it is really up to Putin to accept this offer of negotiations and agree to a ceasefire. The ball is in Russia’s court.”

French President Emmanuel Macron voiced support for fresh sanctions against Russia, warning they could be rolled out within days should Moscow fail to observe a ceasefire.

Speaking on Tuesday, Macron pointed to financial services and the energy sector—including oil and gas—as likely targets.

His comments follow a joint warning issued over the weekend by the UK, France, Germany and Poland, who said Russia would face tougher punitive measures unless it complied with demands for a 30-day ceasefire by Monday which Moscow has refused to do.

I have just heard President Trump's statement. Very important words.

I supported @POTUS idea of a full and unconditional ceasefire — long enough to provide the foundation for diplomacy. And we want it, we are ready to uphold silence on our end.

I supported President Trump…

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) May 12, 2025

Fighting drags on

Meanwhile, Ukraine said its air defence units destroyed all 10 drones that Russia launched overnight on Tuesday. This is the lowest number of drones that Russia has launched in an overnight attack in several weeks.

The Ukrainian military’s general staff said as of 10pm (19:00 GMT) on Monday, there had been 133 clashes with Russian forces along the front line since midnight, when the ceasefire proposed by European powers was to have come into effect.

Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, was quoted by Zelenskyy as saying the heaviest fighting still gripped the Donetsk region, the focus of the eastern front, and Russia’s western Kursk region, nine months after Kyiv’s forces staged a cross-border incursion.

Meanwhile, Russia accused Ukraine of attacking Belgorod, with Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov saying on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces used 65 drones and more than 100 rounds of ammunition to attack the region in the past day.