Zelenskyy Waiting for Putin   05/14 07:30

   

   KYIV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday 
that he will be waiting for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the 
Turkish capital this week to conduct face-to-face talks about the more than 
3-year war, amid heavy pressure from the U.S. and European leaders to reach a 
settlement.

   Putin hasn't yet said whether he will be at the talks, which U.S. President 
Donald Trump has urged the two sides to attend as part of Washington's efforts 
to stop the fighting.

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

   Zelenskyy 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."

   Zelenskyy said that if Putin chooses Istanbul to hold the meeting, then both 
leaders will travel there from Ankara.

   "If Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he 
does not want to end the war," Zelenskyy said.

   The Ukrainian leader added that if Putin doesn't show up, European and U.S. 
leaders should follow through with threats of additional and heavy sanctions 
against Russia.

   Trump, who is on a four-day Middle East trip, said Tuesday that Secretary of 
State Marco Rubio would attend the talks. Special envoy Steve Witkoff also is 
set to take part, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of 
anonymity to preview plans that have not been made public.

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

   Military analysts say that 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 roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line. 
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Monday 
that Russia is "quickly replenishing front-line units with new recruits to 
maintain the battlefield initiative."

   German leader says ball is in Putin's court

   International pressure has been growing to push Ukraine and Russia into 
finding a settlement.

   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," Merz added. 
He said that "we will focus on further areas, such as the energy sector and the 
financial market."

   Merz welcomed Zelenskyy's readiness to travel personally to Turkey, "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."

   Russia isn't saying whether Putin will attend talks

   Overnight, Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the 
Ukrainian air force said. It was Russia's smallest drone bombardment this year.

   The Kremlin hasn't directly responded to Zelenskyy's challenge for Putin to 
meet him in person at the negotiating table.

   Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined for the second straight day Tuesday 
to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else will 
represent Russia at the potential talks.

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

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

   European leaders say Putin is dragging his feet

   Zelenskyy won't be meeting with any Russian officials in Istanbul other than 
Putin, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Tuesday on a YouTube 
show run by prominent Russian journalists in exile.

   Lower-level talks would amount to simply "dragging out" any peace process, 
Podolyak said.

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

   Russia effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, starting 
Monday, that was demanded by Ukraine and Western European leaders, when it 
fired more than 100 drones at Ukraine. Putin instead offered direct peace talks.

   But the wrangling over whether a ceasefire should come before the talks 
begin has continued.

   "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 Tuesday.

   Negotiations are impossible while "the Ukrainian people are under attack by 
Russian missiles and drones around the clock," Yermak said in a video address 
to the Copenhagen Democracy Summit 2025.

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

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

   Putin and Zelenskyy have only met once, in 2019.

   In the war's early months, Zelenskyy repeatedly called for a personal 
meeting with Putin but was rebuffed. After the Kremlin's decision in September 
2022 to illegally annex four regions of Ukraine --- Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson 
and Zaporizhzhia --- Zelenskyy issued the decree declaring that holding 
negotiations with Putin had become impossible.

   On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said that this decree affected other Ukrainian 
officials who were directly negotiating with the Russian leader.