MORE SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA?
Trump, who is growing increasingly frustrated with both Russia and Ukraine as he tries to push them towards a peace settlement, said he was “always considering” secondary sanctions against Moscow if he thought it was blocking the process.
US officials have spoken about possible financial sanctions as well as potential secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil.
The US delegation to Turkey included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and senior envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said early on Thursday he had met with Rubio to share Zelenskyy’s peace vision and “coordinate positions during this critical week”.
Medinsky and Fomin, part of the Russian delegation, took part in the last negotiations between the two sides in the first weeks of the war.
Direct talks between negotiators from Ukraine and Russia last took place in Istanbul in March 2022, a month after Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in what he calls a “special military operation” to root out neo-Nazis.
Ukraine and its allies say the invasion was an unprovoked, imperial-style land grab.
With Russian forces grinding forward in Ukraine and now controlling about a fifth of the country, Putin has offered few, if any, concessions so far. In his proposal over the weekend, he said that the talks in Turkey would be aimed at a durable peace.
He specifically mentioned the 2022 talks and the failed draft deal.
Under that deal, among others, Ukraine would have agreed to permanent neutrality in return for security guarantees from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the US – and other nations including Belarus, Canada, Germany, Israel, Poland and Turkey, according to a draft seen by Reuters.
But officials in Kyiv say agreeing to Ukrainian neutrality is a red line they will not cross.
