Witkoff, Zelensky, Erdogan To Meet In Turkey In Effort To Revive Peace Talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced he is going to Turkey Wednesday in order to try and revive negotiations with Russia toward reaching a settlement to end the war.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to be there for the talks, which would see Turkey play mediator, as it did during short-lived talks in the opening months of the war. However, the Kremlin has made clear that it won’t participate at this point, in the wake of the earlier planned Putin-Trump summit in Hungary having been called off.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “No, there will be no Russian representatives in Turkey tomorrow. For now, these contacts are taking place without Russian participation.”

But Peskov did say that President Vladimir Putin remains open to conversations with the US and Turkey on whatever results from the talks, but also emphasized that Moscow is still engaging Washington directly on any potential path forward.

Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev is not expected in Ankara either, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be directly hosting.

“Dmitriev held very productive discussion with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff on October 24-26 in the United States,” a Russian source told Reuters.

It remains that Russia has the leverage and upper-hand on the battlefield along the front lines, and yet Ukraine and its Western backers still refuse to contemplate territorial negotiations, or also a permanent renunciation of ever joining NATO.

According to the latest from the battlefield via TASS:

Russian troops liberated two communities in the Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk Regions over the past 24 hours in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported.

“Battlegroup North units liberated the settlement of Tsegelnoye in the Kharkov Region… Battlegroup East units advanced deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlement of Nechayevka in the Dnepropetrovsk Region,” the ministry said in a statement.

At this moment, Zelensky’s trip to Turkey appears all about the following: a source told AFP the Ukrainian leader’s “main goal is for the Americans to re-engage” in peace efforts.

“We are also working to restore POW exchanges and bring our prisoners of war home,” Zelensky has also stated. The US side has also affirmed that it is speaking to Moscow on the issue of arranging prisoner swaps.