As talks begin, Trump says there won't be a resolution on Ukraine until he meets Putin

Russian officials arrived in Istanbul, but Ukraine insists on talks between leaders, not at a technical level

- Bloomberg

S President Donald Trump said there'll be no resolution of Russia's war in Ukraine until he meets with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, as the prospects for planned peace talks in Turkey remained uncertain.

"Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together," Trump told reporters Thursday on board Air Force One as he travelled to the UAE. "And obviously he wasn't going to go. He was going to go, but he thought I was going to go. He wasn't going if I wasn't there."

Trump earlier said he hadn't expected Putin to attend the peace talks in Istanbul on Thursday between Russia and Ukraine. Putin late on Wednesday named a group of low-level officials to represent Russia at the meeting, led by his aide Vladimir Medinsky, and gave no indication that he planned to join the negotiations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed Moscow's delegation as "a sham" as he landed in Ankara on Thursday, and said he'll decide on further steps after meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Top European diplomats attending a Nato foreign ministers' meeting in the Turkish resort of Antalya on Thursday also accused Putin of undermining the talks.

The Russian leader is trying "to play for time," Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters. "We hope that the president of the United States sees this mockery for what it is and draws the right conclusions."