Zelensky arrives in Turkey to seek peace—but Putin is a no-show

Zelensky, who is slated to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in capital Ankara, wasn’t expected to meet with the Russian negotiating team that separately arrived in Istanbul on Thursday morning.

But a meeting between lower-level Ukrainian negotiators and the Russians remains possible, perhaps as early as Thursday afternoon. No time for that encounter has been set so far. Senior U.S. negotiators are also scheduled to travel to Istanbul on Thursday evening and Friday.

This complex diplomatic maneuvering reflects attempts by both Russia and Ukraine to convince the Trump administration that they are interested in a peaceful solution—but without compromising on their own core positions. Trump, who is visiting the Persian Gulf, has made ending the war in Ukraine his key foreign policy priority.

Trump hinted Wednesday that he might come to Turkey if Putin also attended—but the Russian leader, who kept the option open for days, announced hours later that he is sending instead a junior team led by former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky. Despite that snub, Trump held out the possibility of a breakthrough.

“I was thinking about going, but it’s very tough because of what we’re doing today and tomorrow. But you know, if something happened, I’d go on Friday if it was appropriate," he said Thursday in Doha, Qatar, ahead of a visit to Abu Dhabi.

In March, after a turbulent meeting that resulted in Zelensky’s ejection from the White House, the Ukrainian leader accepted Trump’s call for a 30-day unconditional cease-fire to facilitate more substantive talks on ending the war. Ukrainian negotiators only plan to meet the Russian team that arrived in Istanbul to discuss implementing and monitoring that cease-fire, and won’t touch other matters until the cease-fire is in place, according to officials briefed on Kyiv’s position.

Unlike Zelensky, Putin declined to heed Trump’s cease-fire request. Instead, he sent to Istanbul the same officials who represented him in the abortive negotiations of March 2022 that essentially sought Ukraine’s surrender.

Russian officials said they seek to renew the talks with Ukraine on the basis of the 2022 Istanbul draft agreements, discussed at a time when Russian tanks were deployed on the Kyiv ring road. These drafts, never endorsed by Zelensky, called for a dramatic cut in the size of Ukrainian armed forces, restrictions on Ukrainian weaponry, and other wide-ranging limits on Ukrainian sovereignty.

All of that is unacceptable for Ukraine and its European allies, which intend to continue supplying weapons to Kyiv and hardening the Ukrainian army so it would be able to defend the country against renewed Russian attacks. Ukraine currently controls much bigger territory and has much more potent weapons—including those that can strike deep into Russian territory—than in March 2022.

Ahead of the Zelensky-Erdogan meeting, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha discussed Ukraine’s negotiating stance in the Turkish city of Antalya with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sen. Lindsey Graham and, separately, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland. Rubio, Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Middle East Steve Witkoff and his special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg are all expected in Istanbul, according to U.S. officials.

The leaders of France, Poland, Germany and the U.K. visited Zelensky in Kyiv last week, calling on Putin to agree to an unconditional cease-fire and pledging ramped-up sanctions against Russia if he fails to do so. Trump has also discussed the possibility of secondary sanctions that would strangle Russia’s oil exports—the country’s main source of income—if Putin refuses to engage in the peace process. Graham is pushing through legislation with that aim. It is unclear whether the White House, which so far focused on wooing rather than threatening Putin, would in the end agree to such punitive measures.

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com