MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin currently has no plans to travel to Istanbul for peace talks with Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Thursday, but the Russian delegation is there and ready to meet the Ukrainian team.
It was Putin’s initiative to hold what would be the first direct peace talks in more than three years in Istanbul on Thursday but he never said he would be going himself and has instead despatched a delegation there headed by Vladimir Medinsky, one of his presidential advisers.
Asked if Putin would travel to Turkey for talks in the coming days, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters:
“There are no such plans at the current time. There is a delegation of Russian negotiators in Istanbul who are waiting for their Ukrainian counterparts who have not yet turned up.”
Asked if Putin would go to Istanbul if U.S. President Donald Trump did, Peskov said Russia did not know yet how the negotiations would go.
“It is premature to say what kind of participation will be required and at what level because we do not know if the Ukrainian negotiators will show up or not and how the negotiations will go,” Peskov said.
Trump, who is on a three-nation tour of the Middle East, said on Thursday that he could go to Turkey for talks on Friday “if it is appropriate”.
(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Andrew Osborn)
