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U.S. envoy Steve Vitkov will join talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday, with the Ukrainian president saying he wants to “intensify” peace talks.
“Doing our best to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible is Ukraine’s top priority,” Zelensky said, adding that efforts would also focus on resuming prisoner exchanges.
Türkiye maintains ties with both Kiev and Moscow and has previously hosted talks between the two factions.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian representatives would not attend the meeting in Ankara.
He added that while Vladimir Putin had “no concrete plans” to talk to Turkey or Vitkov, the Russian president was “certainly open to dialogue.”
Ankara will be the fourth capital Zelenskiy visits in as many days. In Athens, he struck a gas deal; in Paris, he signed an agreement to buy up to 100 fighter jets; and in Madrid, he held cooperation talks with Spanish arms manufacturers.
The visits are part of Zelensky’s mission to try to bolster European support for Ukraine as Russia intensifies its attacks on the country and Moscow’s troops close in on the key eastern city of Pokrovsk.
At home, Zelensky Facing its worst crisis in years. Several members of his closest circle are under investigation for co-organizing large-scale criminal schemes, and two ministers have resigned.
The scandal is still likely to widen, with some EU leaders deciding in December whether to lift the blockade €140bn (£121bn) loan to Kyiv based on frozen Russian state assets — warned Zelensky that more needed to be done to address corruption.
As the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began in February 2022, approaches, Moscow and Kiev remain fundamentally opposed in their views on how to end the war.
In early November, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia’s peace agreement conditions had not changed since Putin proposed them in 2024.
At that time, the Russian president demanded that Kyiv give up its ambition to join NATO and that Ukraine fully withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.
Zelensky has repeatedly argued that withdrawing troops from Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as Donbass, would leave the rest of the country vulnerable to future attacks.
After a lengthy meeting with Putin in April, Vitkov appeared to suggest that a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev hinged on the status of the disputed Ukrainian region and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. That stance led to tensions with Zelensky, who accused him of “spreading Russian rhetoric.”
Zelensky and Witkov have not met since early September. U.S. efforts to promote a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine have stalled despite a series of high-level talks and meetings this summer – including between Trump and Putin.
Trump and Putin briefly looked set to meet again in Budapest, but that summit was canceled, apparently after the United States realized that Moscow had no intention of giving up on several demands that Kiev was unable to accept.
But contacts between U.S. and Russian officials continue, albeit in a low-key manner. Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev reportedly met with Vitkov in Washington in late October, just days after Trump imposes sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil companies.
