Zelensky says he will be waiting for Putin for face-to-face talks in Ankara

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will be waiting for Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Turkey this week to conduct face-to-face talks about the war amid heavy pressure from the US and European leaders to reach a settlement.

Mr Putin has not said whether he will be at the talks, which US President Donald Trump has urged the two sides to attend as part of Washington’s efforts to stop the fighting.

Mr Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv that he will be in Ankara on Thursday to conduct negotiations. He will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two will wait for Mr Putin to arrive, he said.

The Ukrainian leader said he would “do everything to agree on a ceasefire, because it is with (Putin) that I must negotiate a ceasefire, as only he can decide on it”.

Mr Zelensky said that if Mr Putin chooses Istanbul to hold the meeting, then both leaders will travel there.

“If Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war,” he added.

The Ukrainian leader said that if Mr Putin does not show up, European and US leaders should follow through with threats of additional heavy sanctions against Russia.

Mr Trump has been invited to the talks because “it would give an additional push for Putin to fly in”, but the US leader has not confirmed his presence, Mr Zelensky said. The US president will still be on his four-day Middle East trip on Thursday.

Washington has been applying pressure on both sides to come to the table since Mr Trump took office in January with a promise to end the war.

Military analysts say both sides are preparing a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the 620-mile front line.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Russia is “quickly replenishing frontline units with new recruits to maintain the battlefield initiative”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pressed again for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire as he met his Greek counterpart in Berlin 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,” Mr Merz added, saying “we will focus on further areas, such as the energy sector and the financial market”.

Mr Merz welcomed Mr Zelensky’s readiness to travel personally to Istanbul, “but now it is really up to Putin to accept this offer of negotiations and agree to a ceasefire. The ball is exclusively in Russia”.

Overnight, Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said, in its smallest drone bombardment this year.

Moscow has not directly responded to Mr Zelensky’s challenge for Mr Putin to meet him in person at the negotiating table.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused for the second straight day on Tuesday to tell reporters whether Mr Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else would represent Russia.

“As soon as the president considers it necessary, we will make an announcement,” Mr Peskov said.

Russia has said that it would send a delegation to Istanbul without preconditions.

Mr Zelensky will not be meeting any Russian officials in Istanbul other than Mr Putin, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak.

Lower-level talks would amount to simply “dragging out” any peace process, he added.

European leaders have recently accused Mr Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts, while he attempts to press his bigger army’s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.

Moscow effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and western European leaders from Monday, when it fired more than 100 drones at Ukraine. Mr Putin instead offered direct peace talks.

“Ukraine is ready for any format of negotiations with Russia, but a ceasefire must come first,” Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on Tuesday.

Negotiations are impossible while “the Ukrainian people are under attack by Russian missiles and drones around the clock”, he added in a video address to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit 2025.

Mr Putin has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, especially Mr Zelensky, saying his term expired last year. Under Ukraine’s constitution, it is illegal for the country to hold a national election while it is under martial law, as it now is.

Mr Zelensky dismissed claims that a decree enacted by him in 2022 prohibited him from meeting Mr Putin, saying that the claim was Russian propaganda.