Russia grabs a bit more of Ukraine as it heads into peace talks

On eve of Istanbul peace talks, Moscow ignored a US-EU call for a 30-day ceasefire and showed signs of preparing for new offensives.

Russian forces made creeping advances through Ukraine’s east this week, as the two countries prepared to hold their first direct talks in three years on Thursday.

Russian forces captured the settlement of Kotlyarivka, southwest of the embattled area of Pokrovsk, on Monday, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said.

The seizure brought Russian forces to within 3.7km (2.3 miles) of the regional border between Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine.

Russian forces also forced their way into the village of Myrolyubivka, east of Pokrovsk, and claimed to have taken the entire settlement.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed its forces took the community of Mykhailovka, also in Donetsk.

These were minor advances, but showed there was no letup in Russia’s effort to take all of Donetsk and other regions it partly occupies, even as it prepared to go into peace talks.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, Russia was even moving troops into position for a major new offensive, the United Kingdom’s Financial Times reported.

US President Donald Trump called for a 30-day ceasefire on May 8. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by the leaders of Poland, Germany, France and Britain, backed that demand on Saturday.

“We are not ruling out that during these talks we will be able to agree on some new ceasefire, a new truce,” he said.

Zelenskyy has said he would attend the talks in Istanbul if Putin does as well. Putin was expected after his spokesman said Russia would attend “at the corresponding” level, but then his name did not appear on a list of delegates Russia provided.

“If Putin does not show up – if this is another game – it will clearly demonstrate that Russia is not ready to end the war,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media, calling for a new sanctions package in that case.

As of Wednesday night, he was saying: “I am waiting to see who will come from Russia, and then I will decide which steps Ukraine should take.”

US President Donald Trump, currently on a Middle East tour, is claiming credit for this diplomatic initiative.

Peace talks

“I insisted that that meeting take place and it is taking place,” he said.

Trump dispatched his Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and said he “was thinking of actually flying over. There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen.”

There appeared to be a connection between Putin’s meetings with foreign leaders on Saturday, and his peace talks proposal at dawn on Sunday.

At 1:30am [22:30 GMT] on Sunday morning, he was still in talks with the leader of South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia.

It was the last of four days of meetings with 23 leaders who came to Moscow for the May 9 parade to celebrate the end of the second world war.

At 4am [01:00 GMT], he alerted the media that he would announce “the results of international events to mark the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany”.

When he invited Ukraine to peace talks in Turkiye less than two hours later, he also thanked foreign partners for their “peace-oriented efforts”, Kremlin newswire TASS reported.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine had received a message of support for its call for a 30-day ceasefire from China, perhaps a sign that China privately put pressure on Putin to pursue peace.

There were strong headwinds going into the talks, however.

Putin’s language when announcing the talks was not friendly.

“The ball is now in the court of the Kyiv government and its curators, who are guided by political ambitions – not their people’s interests – in their desire to continue the conflict with Russia with the hands of Ukrainian nationalists,” he said, a reference to European governments, which have been less keen than the Trump administration to push Ukraine into talks.

Russia is taking a hard line going in. On Tuesday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Russia would insist on the “denazification of the Kyiv regime”, Moscow’s way of describing Zelenskyy’s removal from office, and recognition of “current realities on the ground” – ie, there will be no territorial concessions.

On Tuesday, almost on the eve of talks in Istanbul on Thursday, Putin was selling Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine to investors at the Delovaya Rossiya (Business Russia) association, implying there would be no territorial concessions. “There is something to invest in there. There are such lands, fertile in terms of agriculture and favourable in terms of tourism development,” he said.