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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will hold talks this week with Türkiye, Gulf states and European nations that could host a potential summit with Russia to end the war.
“Now, this week, there will be contacts with Türkiye, there will be contacts with the Gulf countries, with the countries of Europe, which can be platforms for talks with the Russians,” Zelenskyy said in an evening video address shared on Telegram.
He said that everything will be “prepared to the maximum” on the Ukrainian side to end the over three-and-a-half-year long armed conflict in his country, adding it is important that this is also confirmed by Kyiv’s partners.
He further said that everything in the future will depend on the will of world leaders, primarily the U.S., to put pressure on Russia to take part in such negotiations.
“New steps are needed, new pressure: sanctions, tariffs – all this must be on the table,” Zelenskyy went on to say, noting that he discussed this issue with U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg during a meeting in Kyiv a day earlier.
He also claimed that Russia is giving signals that it will evade negotiations, which he argued can only be changed with stronger pressure on Moscow.
Last week, the Ukrainian president named Türkiye, Austria, and Switzerland as possible venues for a face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart amid intense diplomatic efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin conveyed Moscow’s readiness to continue direct peace talks with Kyiv during his latest phone call with Trump, adding that he also conveyed to the U.S. president that potential high-level meetings, especially such as the one between Putin and Zelenskyy, must be “very well prepared.”
Türkiye has hosted key diplomatic encounters between Moscow and Kyiv since the early weeks of the ongoing conflict, including three rounds of direct peace talks between the two countries on May 16, June 2, and July 23 in Istanbul.
The three rounds of renewed peace talks in the Turkish metropolis produced major prisoner swaps and an exchange of draft memorandums outlining both sides’ positions for a future peace deal.
