Trump says nothing will happen on Ukraine until he meets Putin

U.S. President Donald Trump said there’ll be no resolution of Russia’s war in Ukraine until he meets with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, as the prospects for planned peace talks in Turkey remained uncertain.

“Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told reporters Thursday on board Air Force One as he traveled to the United Arab Emirates. “And obviously he wasn’t going to go. He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there.”

Trump earlier Thursday said he hadn’t expected Putin to attend the peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday between Russia and Ukraine. Putin late Wednesday named a group of low-level officials to represent Russia at the meeting, led by his aide Vladimir Medinsky, and gave no indication that he planned to join the negotiations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Moscow’s delegation as “a sham” as he landed in Ankara on Thursday, and said he’ll decide on further steps after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Top European diplomats attending a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in the Turkish resort of Antalya on Thursday also accused Putin of undermining the talks.

The Russian leader is trying “to play for time,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters. “We hope that the President of the United States sees this mockery for what it is and draws the right conclusions.”

The momentum had been building for a possible meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders late this week, in what would be a first direct diplomatic encounter since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion more than three years ago. Putin proposed restoring direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in a late-night statement on Saturday.

That came after Ukraine and European powers had demanded that Putin agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire starting May 12, claiming they had U.S. backing for powerful new sanctions if he refused.

Russian officials arrived in Istanbul, but Ukraine insists on holding talks between leaders, not at a technical level, said a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump, who’s on a Middle East tour, earlier told reporters in Qatar that he may still consider going to Turkey, even as Putin has so far shown no indication that he’s willing to join the negotiations.

“I was thinking about going, but it’s very tough because of what we’re doing today and tomorrow,” Trump said. “But you know, if something happened, I’d go on Friday if it was appropriate.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’s at the NATO gathering in Antalya, said Washington was “open to being constructive and being helpful in any way to end the conflict,” adding that “we want to see progress made.” Rubio is due to join U.S. presidential envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg in Istanbul on Friday.

Moscow has so far balked at a U.S. ceasefire proposal, which would freeze the conflict broadly along the current lines, grant U.S. recognition of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as Russian, and see U.S. sanctions lifted. Ukraine in return would receive strong security guarantees and a right to develop its own army, Bloomberg reported previously.

The U.S. has since added new details to the proposal, including an offer to revive security talks under the NATO-Russia Council, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The partnership forum effectively ended after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The uncertainty around the Russia-Ukraine negotiations cast a shadow over the meeting of NATO foreign ministers. The meetings in Antalya between Rubio and European foreign ministers offer a chance to align over Ukraine after European leaders issued their ultimatum last weekend.

The European leaders had said they had U.S. backing for coordinated sanctions on Russia if Moscow kept up strikes on Ukraine. But Trump didn’t publicly back the proposed ceasefire date, and the deadline came and went without either side stopping the fighting.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters Thursday that he was “still cautiously optimistic that if also the Russians are willing to play ball that you could get to some breakthroughs over the next couple of weeks.”

In conversations between U.S. and European officials earlier this week, previously reported by Bloomberg, the American side was unclear on whether it was still ready to impose sanctions on Russia if attacks continued, or what it would do if Putin refused to meet with Zelenskyy and to halt the fighting.

European leaders were expected to urge Trump to follow through with his threat to sanction Moscow if Putin declines the meeting with Zelenskyy or Russia doesn’t agree to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire this week, Bloomberg reported.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met with Rubio and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Wednesday in Antalya to discuss peace efforts and further steps.

Graham, a Trump ally, said earlier this month that he has bipartisan support for a bill that would enact “bone-crushing” new sanctions on Russia including a 500% tariff on imports from countries that buy Russian oil, petroleum products, natural gas or uranium.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters on Thursday in Antalya that he will be meeting with Graham to discuss his sanctions package.

“We want to build upon, to add European deterrence sanctions to this U.S. package,” he said. Sanctions “will include sanctions on oil and sanctions on financial institutions.”

The European Union on Wednesday agreed on a 17th package of sanctions targeting Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers and individuals and entities that help Moscow evade energy restrictions, but the measures are seen as largely incremental.

Trump has urged both sides to meet for talks as he has vented increasing frustration with Moscow over its foot-dragging in the negotiations and threatened to levy new sanctions. Putin has continued to press maximalist demands, including demanding a stop to all western military aid to Ukraine.

The Kremlin has repeatedly said that new sanction threats can’t change its position and that Russia has adjusted to life under the western restrictions.

In his decree appointing Medinsky to lead the Russian team, Putin also named Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, and Igor Kostyukov, head of military intelligence, in the delegation. A group of four other officials were named as “experts.”

Medinsky led Russia’s negotiators at meetings in Istanbul soon after the start of the February 2022 war. Those talks broke down amid recriminations over a draft protocol of Russian demands that Putin later asserted had been largely accepted by Ukraine. The government in Kyiv has rejected this claim.

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—With assistance from Alberto Nardelli.