Turkey expects direct negotiations on a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia to continue, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Wednesday.
Further meetings are expected in Turkey, likely first between the negotiating teams and then between the foreign ministers, the top diplomat said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels.
Çavuşoğlu also said the alliance was aware of Ukraine's demands for more weapons, and allies were looking to step up help.
Turkey’s delicately balanced act of assuming a role as a mediator by keeping communication channels with both warring sides open provides a glimmer of hope in diplomatic efforts to find a solution and achieve peace in the Ukraine crisis. With its unique position of having friendly relations with both Russia and Ukraine, Turkey has won widespread praise for its push to end the war.
Most recently, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated his offer to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks to secure peace between the two countries. Erdoğan voiced hope that a possible summit between the two leaders in Istanbul could bring an end to the war. He added that Putin and Zelenskyy need to take steps regarding Donbass and Crimea.
Conditions regarding these two regions are still obstacles between the two warring sides in negotiations, and Ukraine perceives Russian demands on the two regions as violations of its own territorial integrity.
The venue for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would most likely be Turkey, Interfax Ukraine cited Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia as saying last week.
Putin and Zelenskyy are expected to meet in Turkey "with a high degree of probability," the agency reported, citing Arakhamia. It said the negotiator told Ukrainian television that a time and place for a meeting had not been set.
Both sides have described the negotiations in recent days as difficult. The talks are a combination of face-to-face sessions in Turkey and virtual meetings.
In a breakthrough, Russian and Ukrainian delegations met for peace talks in Istanbul on March 29 as the war entered its second month with casualties piling up on both sides.
During the talks, Ukrainian officials signaled readiness to negotiate a "neutral status," a key Russian demand, but demanded security guarantees for their country.
Russia, meanwhile, pledged to significantly decrease its military activities toward the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv to build trust for future negotiations.
Ukraine wants to see countries, including Turkey, as guarantors in a deal with Russia, a Ukrainian negotiator said after the talks.
Turkey also hosted the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine in Antalya last month. Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine met in the Turkish resort town of Antalya for talks, which Turkish top diplomat Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also attended. The talks were largely inconclusive, but Ankara views the fact that the talks took place at all as a success.
Çavuşoğlu also admitted that the images of atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and other areas had damaged "the relatively positive atmosphere" seen in face-to-face talks in Istanbul last week.
"We are still hopeful and cautiously optimistic. At the same time, we are realistic," Çavuşoğlu said.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has called for an independent investigation into the ruthless murder of civilians in Bucha and other cities by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Putin and Moscow are facing even more vehement criticism from the international community after Ukraine accused Russian forces of committing “genocide” and “war crimes” in Bucha, a town near the capital Kyiv.
The Ukrainian army retook control of the key commuter town of Bucha outside Kyiv just a few days ago and said it had found dozens of bodies after Russian forces pulled out.
Zelenskyy has called the killings “war crimes” and “genocide” and Western countries have ramped up sanctions against Russia in reaction to the deaths.
But the Kremlin has denied the accusations and claimed the images emerging from Bucha and other towns are fakes produced by Ukrainian forces, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out.
