Putin seeks to revive stalled Ukraine peace process

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin has proposed holding direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on 15 May, saying the aim should be to reach a lasting agreement and address the causes of the conflict.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, sparking the biggest crisis between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

He said that Russia was proposing direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in an attempt to ‘eliminate the root causes of the conflict’ and ‘to achieve the restoration of a long-term, lasting peace.’

Putin said Ukraine broke off earlier negotiations but that Russia is now ready to return to the table with no preconditions.

‘It was not Russia that broke off negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv. Nevertheless, we are proposing that Kyiv resume direct negotiations without any preconditions,’ Putin said, referring to failed talks shortly after the Russian invasion of 2022.

‘We offer the Kyiv authorities to resume negotiations already on Thursday, in Istanbul,’ Putin said.

‘Our proposal, as they say, is on the table. The decision is now up to the Ukrainian authorities and their curators, who are guided, it seems, by their personal political ambitions, and not by the interests of their peoples.’

Major European powers threw their weight behind an unconditional 30-day Ukraine ceasefire on Saturday, with the backing of US President Donald Trump, and threatened Putin with ‘massive’ new sanctions if he did not accept within days.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the ‘bloodbath’ of the Ukraine war, which his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.

Former US President Joe Biden, Western European leaders, and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and have repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.

Putin casts the war as a watershed moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence, including Ukraine.