Ukraine-Russia struggle newest: Trump says he’ll meet Putin ‘soon’ whereas US and Kremlin junior groups meet Kyiv for peace talks | EUROtoday

US officials will speak with Russian negotiators before they engage in talks with their Ukrainian counterparts, Russian state news agency Tass has reported.

The talks were scheduled to begin at 12:30 local time (10:30am BST).

Russian forces killed at least three civilians and injured 15 more over the past day, according to Ukrainian authorities.

In the hours before a Moscow delegation was set to meet its Kyiv counterparts, Russia fired 112 drones at Ukraine, 73 of which were shot down.

One person was killed and six were injured in Ukraine’s Donetsk region and another was killed and five injured in the Kharkiv region, The Kyiv Independent cited regional authorities as saying.

Another civilian was killed in the Kherson region, where three high-rise buildings and seven houses were damaged.

A meeting of EU leaders is underway in Albania, where the war in Ukraine is set to dominate the agenda.

Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Albania for the European Political Community Summit, which will also be attended by the leaders of France, Germany and Britain.

Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, also present, said that it is a good thing that the Ukrainians have come to the negotiating table in Istanbul and added that Russian President Vladimir now has to play ball.

“All the stress is on him,” Rutte said, speaking at a meeting of EU leaders in Albania. He added that Putin had made a mistake by sending a low-level delegation to talks in Turkey.

Other topics at the summit will include security, democracy, migration and EU enlargement.

Senior Ukrainian officials held a meeting in Istanbul on Friday with US envoy Keith Kellogg and senior aides to the French, British and German leaders, Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on social media.

Mr Yermak attended the meeting along with foreign minister Andriy Sybiha and defence minister Rustem Umerov – the latter of whom is due to be part of Ukraine’s delegation for talks with Russia.

One week ago today, nobody foresaw that we may see the first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine today.

While they have not yet begun, a time has now been scheduled: 12:30pm local time (10:30am BST).

It began last weekend, when Vladimir Putin called for direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Turkey on Thursday – talks which did not take place.

Volodymyr Zelensky upped the ante, offering to meet Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump face-to-face in a three way meeting in Istanbul. Moscow confirmed that the Russian president would not attend the talks.

This prompted Mr Zelensky to blast the Moscow delegation – led by Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky – as “low-level” and “stand-in props”.

Donald Trump told reporters that progress in Ukrainian peace talks is unlikely before he meets with Putin. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said the US does not have “high expectations” for the talks.

On Thursday, Mr Zelensky said a delegation led by defence minister Rustem Umerov would be sent to Ukraine. Kyiv had hoped Washington would note that Ukraine appears to be taking the talks more seriously – but there has been no such acknowledgement.

Today, it appears Istanbul talks may now be getting underway. A US-Ukraine-Turkey meeting began at around 9am BST, with the Russia-Ukraine talks scheduled for 10:30am.

We’ll bring you all the latest updates throughout the day.

US, Ukrainian and Turkish delegations began a meeting in Istanbul on Friday, a Turkish foreign ministry source said, amid efforts to reach a peace agreement.

The delegations include foreign ministers from the three countries and other senior officials. They are being held at a venue on the grounds of Dolmabahce Palace on Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait.

Donald Trump has said he will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin “as soon as he can”, adding that it is “time for us to just do it” when asked about ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking from a business summit in the United Arab Emirates this morning, Trump said he knew Vladimir Putin would not have gone to the meeting set for Turkey today.

“I said, you know, they all said Putin was going, Zelensky was going. And I said, If I don’t go, I guarantee Putin [won’t be] going,” Trump said.

“I understand that …. we’re going to get it done. We’ve got to get it done. 5000 young people are being killed every single week on average, and we’re going to get it done.”

Asked when he thought he would meet up with Putin, Trump said: “As soon as we can set it up.”

“I was going to, I would actually leave here and go” he said, but said he also wanted to see his newborn grandson.

Vladimir Putin has sent his aide, Vladimir Medinsky, to head the Russian delegation which Mr Zelensky described as “decorative” and a “theatre prop”.

He has built his career on an ultra-patriotic slant on Russian history, rising through the ranks of the Kremlin to become one of Putin’s most trusted advisers.

The 54-year-old led a previous round of direct negotiations with Ukraine in 2022. He previously served as the Minister of Culture from 2012 to 2020, when he became a presidential aide.

Mr Medinsky, who chairs the ultra-patriotic Russian Military Historical Society, was behind a new history textbook for schools which reflects Putin’s historical view: pride at the achievements of the superpower Soviet Union, indignation at the humiliations of the Soviet collapse, and acclaim for the “rebirth” of Russia under the former KGB spy’s rule which began on the last day of 1999.

The textbooks also include the Kremlin’s version of the war in Ukraine, saying Moscow was “gathering Russian lands from the “ultra-nationalistic state” of Ukraine, and claimed Russia “saved peace” when it annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Medinsky has also repeatedly rejected any historical case for Ukraine to exist as its own state, claiming the idea was created by the Austrian Empire.