Donald Trump’s effort to secure peace in Ukraine is reaching a decisive moment with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskiy challenging Vladimir Putin to engage in talks this week.
Following a weekend of hectic diplomacy, Zelenskiy said he will travel to Istanbul on May 15 where Putin has proposed direct negotiations between the two countries.
But the fragile process is surrounded by doubts and unresolved disputes — Zelenskiy and his European allies have insisted that Russia begins a 30-day ceasefire Monday and have threatened a dramatic increase in sanctions if Putin refuses. They say that the US would join that effort although Trump himself has been more guarded in his public comments and Putin has ignored their demands.
“I will be in Turkey this Thursday,” Zelenskiy said late Sunday in his daily address to Ukrainians. “I hope that this time, Putin won’t be looking for excuses as to why he can’t make it. We are ready to talk, to end this war.”
The US president injected fresh momentum into diplomatic efforts to end the war on Thursday with a call for Putin and Zelenskiy to agree to a ceasefire, raising the prospect of sanctions if Russian troops failed to observe it. On Sunday, he followed up, urging them to sit down and talk.
“HAVE THE MEETING, NOW!!!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
US Senator Lindsey 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.
The movement on Ukraine came amid a flurry of activity as Trump prepares to visit Gulf states this week. The US has also announced progress in trade negotiations with China, nuclear talks with Iran, the war in Gaza and helped to ease tensions between India and Pakistan.
Trump has been coordinating more with his European allies and the Ukrainians in recent weeks as he seeks to pressure Putin to end a war that has stretched on for more than three years. Yet his public rhetoric hasn’t quite matched theirs, sowing doubts as to whether Trump is ready to start implementing a dramatic round of new sanctions.
German Chanceller Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer of the UK and Poland’s Donald Tusk visited Kyiv together on Saturday in a show of support for Zelenskiy and effectively gave Putin an ultimatum, warning that a new sanctions process will begin Monday unless Russia halts its attacks on Ukraine.
Trump had approved their statement and made clear in private conversations that he would go along with them – even with additional sanctions if necessary, according to a European government official familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named.
As the midnight Sunday deadline approached, there was no sign of Russia scaling back its attacks. Kremlin forces fired more than 100 drones at targets across much of Ukraine, including Kyiv, and ground positions in Ukraine’s east had been fired on thousands of times in the past 24 hours, the army’s General Staff said.
Macron spoke again with his European counterparts on Sunday afternoon and then held follow-up conversations with Zelenskiy and Trump to coordinate ahead of a crucial few days, according to a statement from the Elysee palace.
The European leaders are maintaining their stance that Russia must observe a ceasefire from Monday and should expect a strong response from Europe and the US if attacks continue, one senior European official said Sunday, adding that the US is fully supporting that position.
Even further sanctions from the European Union would be far from straightforward because they require unanimity among all 27 members and Hungary has repeatedly stalled previous efforts.
While Russia is open to dialogue on ending its war in Ukraine, it is “resistant to any kinds of pressure,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Saturday.
Putin’s maximalist demands for ending the war have been starting to rankle Trump, who had promised and failed to deliver peace within the the first 100 days of his second term in office.
The Russian president has insisted that any deal gives the Kremlin full control of four regions in the east and southeast of Ukraine that were annexed illegally in the 2022 — even though they aren’t fully occupied by the Kremlin’s forces.
The US has, instead, proposed freezing the conflict more or less along the current front lines, leaving most Russian-occupied territory in Moscow’s hands. The Trump administration is also prepared to recognize the Ukrainian region of Crimea that Putin annexed in 2014 as Russian, Bloomberg reported in April.
After Putin told reporters at the Kremlin over the weekend that he was ready for “serious talks,” Trump hailed “a potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine!” in a social media post.
Turkey had previously hosted talks between lower level Russian and Ukraine officials in 2022, just weeks after the full-scale invasion but those negotiations collapsed after the massacre of civilians by Kremlin forces was uncovered on the outskirts of Kyiv. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also played a role in brokering a 2022 to allow the safe export of Ukrainian grain.
Erdogan, the prospective host of Thursday’s talks, spoke with Putin Sunday and said that he hoped negotiations would lead to a “permanent solution” to the war, according to a statement from his office.
Putin told reporters in the Kremlin that the talks should deal with the root causes of the conflict in Ukraine and establish a lasting peace. Moscow plans to enter the talks “without any preconditions,” he added.
“We do not rule out that during these negotiations it will be possible to agree on some new truces,” he said.
With assistance from Ania Nussbaum, Alberto Nardelli, Michael Nienaber and Alex Wickham.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
