{"id":137623,"date":"2025-05-16T07:53:58","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T07:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-trump-aide-says-putin-meeting-imminent-ahead-of-turkey-talks-the-independent\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T07:53:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T07:53:58","slug":"ukraine-war-latest-trump-aide-says-putin-meeting-imminent-ahead-of-turkey-talks-the-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-trump-aide-says-putin-meeting-imminent-ahead-of-turkey-talks-the-independent\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war latest: Trump aide says Putin meeting \u2018imminent\u2019 ahead of Turkey talks – The Independent"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Marco Rubio, who will be in Istanbul, Turkey, for the peace talks, doesn’t have ‘high expectations\u2019 of breakthrough unless Trump and Putin speak directly
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A meeting between Donald Trump <\/a>and Vladimir Putin <\/a>is \u201cimminent\u201d, White House aide Sebastian Gorka has claimed ahead of critical Russia-Ukraine peace talks<\/a> in Turkey.
Delegations from the US, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey are set to convene in Istanbul<\/a> today for the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in more than three years.
Washington is playing down hopes for the meeting. President Donald Trump<\/a> told reporters no movement should be expected before he and Mr Putin \u201cget together\u201d, <\/a>while secretary of state Marco Rubio, who is in Turkey, said the US “didn’t have high expectations”.
Mr Gorka, a long-time ally of the US president who now serves as his deputy assistant, suggested a meeting between Mr Trump and the Russian president could happen very soon.
\u201cDeals are all about timing. When the time is right, that\u2019s when the president is in the room with Putin,\u201d Mr Gorka said at a Security Summit according to Politico. He said that the moment is \u201cimminent\u201d, without giving details on what that might mean.
Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s delegation in Istanbul will be led by defence minister Rustem Umerov <\/a>, and the Russian team is headed by Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio is in Turkey for a critical day of international diplomacy.
But he won\u2019t be playing a direct role in the talks.
Instead, Michael Anton, the US director for policy planning, will represent the US in talks between Ukraine and Russia, a US state department spokesperson has told the BBC.
It\u2019s another blow for Volodymyr Zelensky, who had hoped that sending a higher-level delegation than the Russian side – and offering to meet Vladimir Putin directly – would reveal to Washington that Moscow is not serious about peace.
The White House appears to have accepted Moscow\u2019s decision not to send a high-level delegation to the talks, itself sending a lower-level representative into the room.
As delegations from Moscow and Kyiv prepare to talk for the first time in more than three years, Russia has continued firing a barrage of drones at Ukraine.
In Kyiv, significant damage was caused and fires broke out after debris from Russian drones fell on the city.
“Explosions in the capital. Air defence is responding to enemy UAVs,\u201d the city\u2019s mayor Vitali Klitschko warned Kyiv\u2019s citizens at 6:38am this morning.
A number of buildings have been damaged in the attack, which to the Ukrainian side is demonstrative of Russia\u2019s attitude towards peace.
The region\u2019s military administration said: “Yet another enemy drone attack on Kyiv Oblast overnight. Air defence units were responding in the oblast. Some enemy targets have been shot down.
\u201cThe fall of Russian drone debris in the Bila Tserkva district has damaged an administrative building, a shop, a non-operational community arts centre and an educational institution.”
A meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is \u201cimminent\u201d, according to White House aide Sebastian Gorka.
Mr Gorka, a long an ally of the US president who serves as his deputy assistant and as a senior director for counter-terrorism, stressed the importance of \u201chalting the bloodshed\u201d as a critical round of diplomacy begins in Turkey.
\u201cDeals are all about timing. When the time is right, that\u2019s when the president is in the room with Putin,\u201d Mr Gorka said at a Security Summit, according to Politico.
He said that the moment is \u201cimminent\u201d, without giving details on what that might mean.
Ukraine and Russia are set to hold their first face-to-face peace negotiations in three years, with discussions expected to take place in Istanbul across multiple formats.
A source from the Turkish foreign ministry confirmed that talks would unfold in \u201cdifferent formats\u201d, with trilateral meetings between Ukraine, Russia and Turkey scheduled. Separate discussions involving the United States, Ukraine and Turkey are also under consideration, reported the Telegraph<\/em>.
\u201cIt has not been finalised whether there will be a quadrilateral format,\u201d the source added, indicating that a four-way meeting remains uncertain at this stage.
The upcoming talks are being closely watched, though hopes for a significant breakthrough remain low.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Thursday, \u201cWashington didn\u2019t have high expectations\u201d for the negotiations.
Turkey will take part in two trilateral meetings today in Istanbul as part of renewed diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine, Turkish foreign ministry sources told Reuters.
A meeting between Turkish, US and Ukrainian officials is scheduled to take place at 07.45am GMT, followed by talks between Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian delegations at 09.30am GMT, the sources said.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer has said Vladimir Putin \u201cmust pay the price for avoiding peace\u201d.
In a statement ahead of European Political Community (EPC) summit in Albania on Friday, he said: \u201cPutin\u2019s tactics to dither and delay, while continuing to kill and cause bloodshed across Ukraine, (are) intolerable.\u201d
The EPC participants are expected to mount pressure on the Kremlin, with Sir Keir saying: \u201cA full, unconditional ceasefire must be agreed and if Russia is unwilling to come to the negotiating table, Putin must pay the price.\u201d
Ukraine lost an F-16 fighter jet on Friday morning after an incident on board, though the pilot ejected safely, the Ukrainian air force said in a statement.
“An unusual situation arose on board. The pilot moved the aircraft away from the settlement and successfully ejected,” it said on Telegram, without giving details.
The air force said the pilot was feeling fine.
It indicated that the crash did not appear to be the result of Russian fire and that a commission had been appointed to investigate all circumstances of the incident.
The crash is the second involving an F-16 since Kyiv began receiving the fighter jets from US allies last year as part of a programme approved by the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
In late August 2024, an F-16 crashed and its pilot died while repelling a major Russian air strike.
Ukraine does not disclose the number of aircraft it has received.
Pope Leo XIV met at the Vatican with the head of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine on Thursday, in one of his first audiences as pontiff that reaffirmed his appeal for a peaceful, negotiated end to Russia’s war.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk said he invited Leo to visit Ukraine and presented the pope with a list of prisoners held by Russia.
The Vatican under Pope Francis had worked for prisoner exchanges, as well as for the return of Ukrainian children taken to live in Russian-occupied territories.
The Vatican did not release any statement after the audience, one of the first private audiences held by Leo since his election on 8 May.
In his first Sunday noon blessing as pope, and again during an audience with pilgrims from eastern rite churches this week, Leo has appealed for an end to the war and expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
“I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people…Let everything possible be done to achieve genuine, just and lasting peace as soon as possible. May all the prisoners be freed, and may the children return to their families.”
The Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, said it was “premature” to think of a possible papal visit to Kyiv, which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had also suggested during a first phone call with Leo on Monday.
The Vatican has a tradition of diplomatic neutrality. Leo has vowed “every effort” to try to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table.
Once they start, the talks will have to address a chasm between the two sides over a host of issues.
Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky is a former culture minister who has overseen the rewriting of history textbooks to reflect Moscow’s narrative on the war.
It includes a deputy defence minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence.
Key members of the team, including its leader, were also involved in the last direct peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022 – and Mr Medinsky confirmed on Thursday that Russia saw the new talks as a resumption of those interrupted three years ago.
“The task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is sooner or later to achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict,” said Mr Medinsky.
The terms under discussion in 2022, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia’s initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine’s military.
With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its Nato membership ambitions and become a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.
Russia and Ukraine have been wrestling for months over the logistics of ceasefires and peace talks while trying to show Donald Trump they are serious about seeking an end what he calls “this stupid war”.
Hundreds of thousands have been killed and wounded on both sides in the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War 2. Washington has threatened repeatedly to abandon its mediation efforts unless there is clear progress.
Asked if Vladimir Putin would join talks at some future point, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said: “What kind of participation will be required further, at what level, it is too early to say now.”
Russia said on Thursday its forces had captured two more settlements in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
A spokesperson for Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov pointedly reminded reporters of his comment last year that Ukraine was “getting smaller” in the absence of an agreement to stop fighting.
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