[Regnum] Trilateral talks with the participation of representatives of Russia, Ukraine and Turkey will be held in Istanbul on Friday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry reported."Tomorrow there will be another series of meetings in different formats. These are the United States, Ukraine, Turkey. Also on the agenda are trilateral talks between the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Turkey," TASS quotes a source from the Turkish Foreign Ministry as saying.
According to the source, it is not yet clear whether the meeting will take place in a four-party format with the participation of the United States, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, the Turkish agency Anadolu wrote earlier that a meeting of delegations from Russia, Ukraine, the United States and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan could take place on Friday.
The talks in Istanbul were scheduled for May 15.
The Russian negotiating team, led by Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, has been in Istanbul since Thursday morning. The head of the Kiev regime, Volodymyr Zelensky, only announced in the afternoon that he would send a delegation to the talks, stating that its main goal was to achieve a ceasefire. The negotiators will be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.
Medinsky stressed that Russia sees the upcoming dialogue in Istanbul as a continuation of the peace process that was interrupted in 2022 by Ukraine. Moscow intends to achieve long-term peace and eliminate the main causes of the conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in March that he was ready to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, but for this to happen, a number of nuances must be taken into account. There are questions about who will monitor the ceasefire and whether the Ukrainian military is ready to follow Kiev's orders, he noted.
More from ria.ru (Ria Novosti)
Russian delegation will wait for Ukrainian negotiators on the morning of May 16
[RIA] Russia will be expecting the Ukrainian side, which is due to arrive for the meeting in Istanbul, tomorrow from 10 a.m., Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky told reporters.
"Tomorrow morning, literally from 10 am, we will be waiting for the Ukrainian side, which should arrive for the meeting," he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin previously proposed that Ukraine resume direct talks without preconditions in Istanbul on May 15. The head of state did not rule out that the parties could reach a ceasefire agreement during the talks. As the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov stated, Russia is determined to seriously search for ways to achieve a long-term peaceful settlement. According to him, the goals of the proposed talks with Ukraine are to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and ensure Russia's interests.
An informed source told RIA Novosti that the negotiations between the delegations of the Russian Federation and Ukraine are expected to take place in the same place as in 2022 - in the working office of the administration of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the center of Istanbul.
The Russian delegation is headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. It also includes Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Galuzin, Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation Igor Kostyukov, and Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin.
According to the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov, the Russian delegation has been in Istanbul since the morning and is waiting for the representatives of Ukraine.
Medinsky said in Istanbul that the Russian official delegation was approved by Putin's order and has all the necessary competencies and powers to conduct negotiations. The Russian delegation is set on a constructive mood, on finding possible solutions and points of contact, and the task of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian side is to sooner or later establish long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict, Medinsky said.