Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he will travel to Turkey’s capital Ankara to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and will be available for direct talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Istanbul on Thursday.
"We will do everything to ensure that this meeting takes place," he told reporters in a hastily-arranged briefing in Kyiv.
Russia has not yet said who will fly to Istanbul, only that it would be announced "as soon as [Putin] deems it necessary". Putin and Zelensky have not themselves met since December 2019.
Direct talks between the two countries last took place in Istanbul, in March 2022, in the early weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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