{"id":137619,"date":"2025-05-16T06:53:57","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T06:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-trump-teases-destination-unknown-as-us-says-he-and-putin-needed-for-ukraine-talks-breakthrough-sky-news\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T06:53:57","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T06:53:57","slug":"ukraine-war-latest-trump-teases-destination-unknown-as-us-says-he-and-putin-needed-for-ukraine-talks-breakthrough-sky-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-trump-teases-destination-unknown-as-us-says-he-and-putin-needed-for-ukraine-talks-breakthrough-sky-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war latest: Trump teases 'destination unknown' – as US says he and Putin needed for Ukraine talks breakthrough – Sky News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timings have been revealed for expected peace talks in Turkey today between Russia and Ukraine – the first direct negotiations in years. On the battlefield, Ukraine has revealed the loss of an F-16 fighter jet. Follow the latest and listen to the Daily podcast below as you scroll.
Friday 16 May 2025 07:37, UK
 Ukraine has lost an F-16 fighter jet after an “unusual situation” on board but the pilot was able to safely eject, the Ukrainian air force has said in a statement.
“According to preliminary data… an unusual situation arose on board. The pilot moved the aircraft away from the settlement and successfully ejected,” it said on Telegram.
The pilot was feeling fine, the force added.
A commission has been appointed to investigate all the circumstances of what happened.
The air force said the loss did not appear to be a result of Russian fire.
It’s the second crash involving an F-16 since Ukrainian forces started receiving them from US allies last year. 
In late August, an F-16 crashed and its pilot died while repelling a major Russian air strike.
Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
After yesterday’s direct talks between Ukraine and Russia failed to materialise, there is hope that today the two sides could come face to face in Turkey.
A delegation from Moscow – without Vladimir Putin – arrived in Istanbul yesterday where it was expected they would take part in the first direct talks with Kyiv in more than three years.
Instead, it was Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met with Russia’s team, led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky.
Medinsky called the meeting “productive”.
Today we’re expecting, according to Turkish foreign ministry sources:
We’ll bring you up to speed with the latest on those discussions and all the latest developments shortly – stay tuned.
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<\/i>
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<\/a>, Dominic Waghorn<\/a> and Ivor Bennett<\/a> with everything you need to know.
By Adam Parsons<\/a>, Europe correspondent <\/b>
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 Dolmabah\u00e7e 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.”
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Timings have been revealed for expected peace talks in Turkey today between Russia and Ukraine – the first direct negotiations in years. On the battlefield, Ukraine has revealed the loss of an F-16 fighter jet. Follow the latest and listen to the Daily podcast below as you scroll.Friday 16 May 2025 07:37, UK Ukraine has lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}