The White House on Thursday backed fresh calls to hold a second round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul next week to exchange written proposals to end the war.
“It is my understanding, and it is our hope that Russia and Ukraine will engage in direct talks and negotiations next week in Istanbul, and we believe that meeting is going to take place” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters adding, “that is a meeting the [US] president [Donald Trump] encouraged and urged for these two sides to come together and negotiate directly.”
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“Hopefully, next week, we’ll move the ball forward,” Leavitt added.
As Kyiv Post reported earlier, Moscow said on Wednesday that it had offered to hold a second round of talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, where it wants to present a so-called “memorandum” outlining its conditions for a long-term peace settlement.
Kyiv, in response, requested a copy of the memorandum in advance to ensure Moscow’s seriousness, a proposal that the Kremlin dismissed.
Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin famously dodged the first round of Istanbul talks on May 16, which he himself had proposed, and instead sent low-level delegates to the discussion table. Ukrainian officials remain skeptical as they view Moscow’s proposals as a way to placate the Western leader amid their growing frustration with Putin. Trump said on Tuesday that the Russian president was “playing with fire.”
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated Kyiv’s skepticism on Thursday, saying that Russia was “doing everything it can” to prolong the war and disrupt negotiations.
Back in Washington, Trump officials said Thursday that they had repeated their calls to Moscow for constructive, good-faith dialogue as “the only way” to end the war. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told a daily briefing on Thursday that Secretary Marco Rubio has conveyed Trump’s position on “good faith talks” during a phone call with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
Kyiv Post learned from diplomatic sources that the Wednesday call between Rubio and Lavrov was initiated by the latter to congratulate the top US diplomat on his birthday.
Bruce told reporters that Rubio took the initiative during the call to welcome the exchange of a thousand for a thousand prisoners between Russia and Ukraine last weekend, which “was arranged while we were in Istanbul,” as she put it, referring to May 16 talks.
When asked by Kyiv Post whether Washington believed that good-faith dialogue could continue alongside the military offensive, Bruce said, “We’re going to find that out.”
“I think the President [Trump] has judged Putin, based on the nature of what was clearly extremely frustrating to him regarding the killing of civilians while talks are going on for a ceasefire. And that’s a judgment that’s going to come from the leaders of this country – the leaders, frankly, of the free world – of whether or not that’s possible, and we’re going to have to take that moment by moment in this case,” she concluded. Yet it remains unclear whether the Trump administration still plans to send its own representatives to the next phase of Istanbul talks.
“I’m not going to go into that. I have nothing to preview for you on that,” Bruce told Kyiv Post’s reporter when asked whether the US would be a part of the upcoming meeting.
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