Volodymyr Zelensky will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara today and only then will he decide on the next steps in peace talks with Russia, a senior Ukrainian official said. “The president will start his visit with Erdogan in Ankara and only then will he decide on the next steps,” the official said, after Russian state media reported that Moscow’s delegation had landed in Istanbul for the scheduled talks.

The Russian delegation in Turkey does not count on President Vladimir Putin, nor on Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. It is led by Vladimir Medinsky, former Minister of Culture and now advisor . "I said the other day that I do not trust Putin," said Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Antalya, Turkey . "Russia cannot and does not want to speed up the process because it has to retrain an army of a million people who earn double what a Russian worker earns and the entire industry is geared towards military production and therefore Putin would have significant social repercussions. However, this is a question that concerns Russia, which caused the war."

Sources in Kiev denied that the talks between Zelensky and the Russian President were already scheduled to begin at 8:00 Italian time. Also in Antalya is US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On the sidelines of NATO's informal Foreign Ministerial, he stated regarding Donald Trump (who was not present at the meeting): "The US President has been more than clear, he wants the war to end. And he is open to any mechanism that leads to a just and lasting peace."

“We’ll see what happens in the next few days in the talks on Ukraine in Turkey, but we want to see progress,” Rubio added. “I repeat: There is no military solution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This war will not end with a military solution, but a diplomatic one . And the sooner we reach an agreement, the fewer people will die and the less destruction there will be.”

(Uniononeonline)

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