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03-03-2025
ANKARA: Turkey’s foreign minister will reiterate at Sunday’s meeting of European leaders in London an offer from Ankara to host peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Saturday.
NATO-member Turkey hosted initial talks between the sides’ months after Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, helping secure a deal for the safe passage of grain exports in the Black Sea. It has said any future peace talks must include both countries.
While repeatedly calling for a ceasefire since 2024, Ankara has welcomed the US initiative to end the war, which was derailed by a public argument between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States in Washington on Friday.
On Sunday, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will brief European leaders on Turkey’s efforts to find a “fair and lasting peace” to the war, the source said, adding he will also affirm Ankara’s commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Fidan is expected to “underline that Turkey, which hosted direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022, is ready to take up this role in the coming period”, and emphasize that all parties must jointly focus on lasting regional security and stability, as well as economic prosperity, in negotiations, the person added.
A Black Sea littoral state like Ukraine and Russia, Turkey has maintained good ties with both since the start of the war. It has provided Kyiv with military support, while refusing to participate in Western sanctions against Moscow.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited Turkey last month, on the same day US and Russian representatives met for talks without Kyiv’s participation in Riyadh aimed at ending the war.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also held talks in Ankara. On Saturday, Fidan and Lavrov discussed the latest developments around the Ukraine-Russia war in a phone call, the source said, marking the third contact between them in the past two weeks.
On Thursday, delegations from the United States and Russia met in Istanbul for talks aimed at addressing bilateral issues regarding the operations of their respective embassies.
Zelenskiy said last week that he saw Turkey as an important security guarantor for Ukraine.
Earlier, Russian and America teams held six hours of talks in Turkey on Thursday to try to restore normal functioning of their embassies, and Vladimir Putin said initial contacts with Donald Trump’s new administration had inspired hope.
The talks, focused narrowly on conditions for each other’s diplomats, provided an early test of the two countries’ ability to reset wider relations, amid a Trump administration outreach effort that has alarmed Washington’s European allies and Kyiv.
The Kremlin last year described relations as “below zero” under the administration of Joe Biden, who backed Ukraine with aid and weapons and imposed sanctions on Russia to punish it for its invasion in 2022 but Trump, who has promised a quick end to the war, has upended US policy swiftly to open talks with Moscow, beginning with a phone call to Putin on February 12 and a high-level diplomatic meeting in Saudi Arabia six days later.
Russian state news agency TASS said Thursday’s talks, held at the gated residence of the US consul general in Istanbul, wrapped up after some six hours without any statements to the press. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
