Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday (May 11) proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15 that he said should be aimed at achieving a durable peace and eliminating the root causes of the war.
The announcement came hours after Kyiv and European leaders called for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire to start Monday.
"We are determined to have serious negotiations ... to eliminate the root causes of the conflict," Putin told reporters in a middle of the night statement at the Kremlin.
"We do not exclude that during these talks we will be able to agree on some new ceasefire," he added, without directly addressing the call made by the leaders of Ukraine, Britain, France, Germany and Poland for a ceasefire to start Monday.
"It was not Russia that broke off negotiations in 2022. It was Kyiv. Nevertheless, we are proposing that Kyiv resume direct negotiations without any preconditions," Putin said.
"Our proposal, as they say, is on the table, the decision is now up to the Ukrainian authorities and their curators, who are guided, it seems, by their personal political ambitions, and not by the interests of their peoples."
"We propose to start (negotiations) without delay on Thursday May 15 in Istanbul," Putin said, adding that he would talk to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan soon to ask his help to facilitate the talks.
Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators held direct talks in Istanbul in the first weeks of the conflict, but failed to agree to halt the fighting, which has been raging ever since.
Tens of thousands have been killed since Russia launched its offensive, with millions forced to flee their homes.
Major European powers threw their weight behind an unconditional 30-day Ukraine ceasefire on Saturday, with the backing of US President Donald Trump, and threatened Putin with "massive" new sanctions if he did not accept within days.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the "bloodbath" of the Ukraine war, which his administration casts as a proxy war between the United States and Russia.
Former US president Joe Biden, Western European leaders and Ukraine cast the invasion as an imperial-style land grab and repeatedly vowed to defeat Russian forces.
Putin on Sunday also accused Ukraine's Western backers of wanting to "continue war with Russia" and - without mentioning the specific Ukraine-European proposal for a 30-day ceasefire - slammed European "ultimatums" and "anti-Russian rhetoric".
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/world/russia-ukraine-war-putin-direct-talks-may-15-istanbul-5122171
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