US secretary of state Marco Rubio says there will be no breakthrough at Ukraine peace talks due to take place in Turkey until Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has criticised Putin for shunning the talks. Listen to the Daily podcast as you scroll.
Thursday 15 May 2025 22:01, UK
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We’ll be back again in the morning with live updates from the war in Ukraine.
Until then, here’s a rundown of what’s been happening over the last 24 hours:
Watch: Russia “not serious” about peace talks, Zelenskyy says
The ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are reaching a critical point.
The Ukrainians believe they’ve called the Kremlin’s bluff over Vladimir Putin’s no-show in Turkey, while Moscow will feel like its humiliated Volodymyr Zelenskyy by sending a junior delegation to Istanbul.
To dissect what this all means, here’s Sky’s Alex Rossi, Dominic Waghorn and Ivor Bennett with everything you need to know.
By Adam Parsons, Europe correspondent
So is this the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning or just a bit of pointless pantomime? Or might it be all of them, depending on your point of view?
On the one hand, Ukraine’s leader has turned up for peace talks with a strong backroom team and a desire to negotiate over the war.
From his perspective, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the bluff of Vladimir Putin.
“You said you wanted to talk, so here I am,”is the message.
But Putin is, for the moment at least, nowhere to be seen, and neither are the members of his very top team.
No Sergei Lavrov, for instance, the foreign minister who has sourly dismissed these negotiations as being blighted by “Western puppeteers” controlling Zelenskyy, who he described as “a pathetic person”.
So is that bluster a sign of absolute genuine contempt, or a negotiating tactic? Probably both.
Vladimir Putin has replaced the commander of Russia’s ground forces, according to a decree published on the Kremlin’s website.
Gen Oleg Salyukov, 69, had been in charge of Russia’s land forces since 2014, overseeing involvement in the Syrian civil war and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Less than a week ago, he was running the annual Victory Day military parade in Moscow, marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany.
Salyukov has since been appointed deputy to ex-defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who was removed from his post last year and made secretary of the Russian security council.
The security council is the Kremlin’s top consultative body, chaired by Putin, and which is responsible for managing and integrating national security policy. It does not have direct authority over Russia’s security agencies and ministries.
Turkey’s foreign minister has been meeting with the head of the Russian delegation in Istanbul.
In the image below, Hakan Fidan is seen alongside Vladimir Putin’s aide, Vladimir Medinsky.
It’s unclear whether Ukraine’s team will be involved in talks this evening.
It’s approaching 10pm in Turkey, but we’re no closer to knowing when peace talks between Ukraine and Russia could happen.
Officials from both countries, and a delegation from the US, are in Istanbul, but it’s unclear when each side might show up at the Dolmabahçe Palace – the planned location of the talks.
On Ukraine’s side, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sent his defence minister Rustem Umerov to represent him.
The Kremlin announced last night that Vladimir Putin would not attend. Instead, the Russian leader sent a delegation led by his aide Vladimir Medinsky, leading Zelenskyy to accuse Moscow of not being serious about talks.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said a little earlier he will meet with the Ukrainian team tomorrow, but said he didn’t have high expectations for negotiations that didn’t feature Putin or Donald Trump (see 5.57pm post).
As the build-up to tomorrow’s proposed peace talks in Turkey continues, the war on the battlefield rages on.
Scroll through the maps below to view different parts of the battlefield, including the situation in key regions such as Luhansk, Donetsk, Kursk and Belgorod.
Donald Trump says he’s not sure where he’ll be tomorrow amid calls for him to join Ukraine-Russia peace talks in Turkey.
A senior White House official said last night that Trump wouldn’t visit Turkey after it was revealed Russian President Vladimir Putin was not attending talks.
But speaking just now from the United Arab Emirates (the third and final stop of Trump’s tour of the Middle East), the US president was coy when asked where he was heading to next.
“We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he told reporters.
“It’s almost ‘destination unknown’. We’re getting calls, ‘could you be here? Could you be there?’ But we’re probably going back to Washington DC.”
Marco Rubio has been speaking in Turkey this evening after he attended a NATO meeting of foreign ministers.
The US secretary of state says he will be meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister and a delegation from Ukraine in Istanbul tomorrow.
It comes as officials from Ukraine and Russia are due to meet for direct talks today, but Rubio said the US “doesn’t have high expectations” for the negotiations.
“It’s my assessment that I don’t think we’re going to have a breakthrough here until the president [Trump] and President Putin interact directly on this topic,” he said.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hit out at the level of delegation sent by Russia, calling them “stand-in props”. Echoing these sentiments, Rubio said the level of the team sent by Russia “does not indicate a breakthrough”.
“I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m 100% wrong,” Rubio adds. “I hope tomorrow the news says they’ve agreed a ceasefire. But it’s not my assessment.”
He says that once talks in Istanbul had concluded tomorrow, the US would decide on a timeline for a potential Putin-Trump meeting.
We’ve just heard from Europe correspondent Adam Parsons, who says today’s developments have been a “diplomatic triangle unlike anything else”.
“Normally, as we know, international diplomacy involves great choreography. It’s planes landing on time, convoys through cities, gripping grim photo opportunities and coordinated talks.
“We haven’t got any of that here. What we’ve got is something that feels a bit of a mess, to be honest.”
Parsons says, on one side, the Ukrainian team in Ankara are asking for the Russians to meet them while, in Istanbul, the delegation from Moscow has been “twiddling its thumbs all day”.
“Zelenskyy says that the Russian group here are effectively hopeless, and that they don’t have the authority to progress any negotiations,” Parsons adds.
“The Russians say that isn’t true, and that they have all the authorisation and that they are ready to do a deal.
“So it’s a difficult one to call about whether this is all showmanship, or whether this could be the chaos that leads to some kind of negotiation.”
On Vladimir Putin’s no-show, Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett says the Russian leader is not “someone who responds or takes kindly to ultimatums or the demands of others – he likes to be the one in charge”.
For this reason, it was “pretty clear” that Putin was never going to fly to Turkey after Zelenskyy called on him to do so.
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