Zelenskyy said he would also not go to Istanbul and that his team’s mandate was to discuss a ceasefire.
A decree issued by Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s delegation would be led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov and include the deputy heads of its intelligence services, the deputy chief of the military’s general staff and the deputy foreign minister.
Ukraine backs an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire but Putin has said he first wants to start talks at which the details of such a truce could be discussed. More than three years after its full-scale invasion, Russia has the advantage on the battlefield and says Ukraine could use a pause in the war to call up extra troops and acquire more Western weapons.
Both Trump and Putin have said for months they are keen to meet each other, but no date has been set. Trump, after piling heavy pressure on Ukraine and clashing with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, has lately expressed growing impatience that Putin may be “tapping me along”.
“Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Rubio, speaking in Antalya, later echoed that thought: “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.”
Referring to the current state of the talks as a “logjam”, Rubio said he would travel to Istanbul to meet with Türkiye’s foreign minister and Ukraine’s delegation on Friday.
The diplomatic disarray was symptomatic of the hostility between the sides and the unpredictability injected by Trump, whose interventions since returning to the White House in January have often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies.
While Zelenskyy waited in vain for Putin in Ankara, the Russian negotiators had no one to talk to on the Ukrainian side. Some 200 reporters milled around near the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus Strait that the Russians had specified as the venue.
