Putin bails on Ukraine peace talks

Moscow hardliner arrives in Istanbul

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A Russian delegation landed in Istanbul yesterday for the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in more than three years, Russian state media reported, but without President Vladimir Putin as many world leaders had urged.

Mr Putin was not included on a list of Moscow’s negotiating team published by the Kremlin late Wednesday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenged him to turn up in person to the talks.

Mr Putin opted instead to send a lower-level team headed up by a hard-line aide who oversaw the failed peace talks in March 2022 in the first weeks of Russia's invasion.

The absence of Mr Putin — as well as any top diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov — would seem to diminish the talks’ importance or any possibility of a breakthrough.

Tens of thousands have been killed since Moscow invaded in February 2022, and Russia now occupies about a fifth of Ukraine's territory in Europe's worst conflict since World War II.

A Ukrainian official told AFP that Mr Zelensky planned to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, not Istanbul, later on yesterday, and only then would decide his approach to the talks.