Russia backs Turkey for new Ukraine talks after nixing Vatican

Henry Meyer and Taylan Bilgic, Bloomberg News on May 27, 2025

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Russia supports Turkey hosting another round of peace talks with Ukraine after a first meeting made no progress in U.S. efforts to halt more than three years of war.

“We are grateful for Turkey for its readiness to continue assisting with such negotiations and a peace settlement,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday after discussions with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan in Moscow.

Turkey hosted the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since 2022 earlier this month in Istanbul. At the meeting, Moscow refused to accept a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire and repeated hardline demands to end its invasion, now in its fourth year. European countries and the U.S. backed an idea by Pope Leo XIV to host negotiations in the Vatican, but Russia rejected the initiative.

Fidan also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lavrov late on Monday, according to the Kremlin.

Russia meanwhile is still working on a draft memorandum for a peace agreement with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tuesday, the Interfax news service reported.

On Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his frustration with Putin over the stalled bid to end the war. The U.S. leader said he was considering new sanctions on Russia and called Putin “absolutely CRAZY!” for “needlessly killing a lot of people” with drone and missile attacks.

Russia launched a record number of drones as well as nine cruise missiles at regions across Ukraine overnight into Monday in the third consecutive night of strikes, Kyiv said. Ukraine said the attack left people injured and civilian infrastructure damaged.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Lavrov and Fidan also discussed “some setbacks” in the construction of a nuclear power plant in southern Turkey, the Turkish foreign minister said, without providing details.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom is currently building Akkuyu, Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, but the project has already been delayed multiple times.