US President Donald Trump said he would speak to the leaders of Russia and Ukraine in separate talks on May 19 after a deadly Russian drone strike killed nine minibus passengers in Ukraine a day after the first direct peace talks in three years failed to make progress.
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In a post on his Truth Social network today, Trump said he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, and the topics of the call would be "stopping the bloodshed that is killing, on average, more than 5.000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers per week, and trade."
He added that he would then speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and have a group discussion with Zelensky and "various NATO members."
"Let's hope it will be a productive day, that there will be a ceasefire and that this very violent war, a war that should never have happened, will end," he wrote.
The day before Ukrainian and Russian delegations held talks in Istanbul on May 16, Trump said, "Nothing is going to happen until Putin and I meet," and after those talks ended without progress toward peace, Trump said he was seeking a meeting with Putin.
Russian attack on civilians in Ukraine
Earlier today, a Russian drone strike hit a minibus carrying civilians in the Sumy region near the Russian border, killing nine people and wounding four others, Ukrainian authorities said.
The attack came a day after the first direct peace talks in more than three years ended without progress, with Kiev accusing Moscow of making "unacceptable" demands.
Russia has rejected calls from Ukraine, European countries and the United States for a 30-day ceasefire in the war, which is now in its fourth year since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The attack was carried out by a drone, the military administration of the Sumy region said.
Ukrainian national police accused Russian forces of deliberately targeting a minibus, which was being used as an intercity bus. It was hit near the town of Bylopil, not far from the Russian border.
Images posted by the National Police on Telegram show a destroyed Mercedes minibus and debris scattered on the road.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which insists it is not targeting civilians despite mounting evidence to the contrary. The Sumy region is the site of frequent Russian attacks.
After brief and unsuccessful negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul on May 16, US President Donald Trump said a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin was needed to make progress in ending Europe's longest conflict since World War II.
"We have to meet," Trump said in an interview with Fox News. He said he was optimistic about engaging with Putin but was prepared to put pressure on Russia if necessary.
"I think we will reach an agreement with Putin... (I) will use influence with Putin if I have to," he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 16 that a Trump-Putin meeting to discuss bilateral relations, Ukraine and other issues is "certainly necessary," but that it will take time to prepare and should not take place if it does not yield results.
Negotiations failed to bridge differences
In talks in Istanbul, which lasted about 90 minutes, negotiators agreed to exchange 1.000 prisoners from both sides in the near future, the leaders of both delegations said. It would be the largest single exchange since the invasion began.
But there was no sign that the wide differences between Russia and Ukraine on issues such as territory and the ceasefire had narrowed. European leaders joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in condemning Moscow.
"The Russian position is clearly unacceptable, and not for the first time," British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a joint statement with the leaders of Poland, Germany and France at a summit in Tirana, Albania.
He said that after a meeting with Zelensky, who was also at the summit, and a joint phone call with Trump in which they discussed the talks in Istanbul, "we are now closely aligning and coordinating our responses and will continue to do so."
"Ukraine is ready to take the fastest possible steps to bring real peace, and it is important for the world to take a firm stand," Zelensky said on social media after his conversation with Trump.
"Our position (is) that if the Russians refuse a complete and unconditional ceasefire and an end to the killing, tough sanctions must follow," he said. "The pressure on Russia must be maintained until Russia is ready to end the war."
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Reuters quoted an unnamed Ukrainian source as saying that the Russian delegation had made demands that were "unacceptable" and "detached from reality and far beyond anything previously discussed."
Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted a Ukrainian source as saying that one such demand was "that Ukraine withdraw from large parts of Ukrainian territory it controls so that a ceasefire can begin."
This concerned four regions that Russia has partially occupied and baselessly claims as Russian - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. Ukraine holds parts of these regions, including the capitals Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Meanwhile, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, an adviser to Putin, said Moscow was “satisfied with the result” overall and was “ready to continue contacts.” He said his delegation had “taken into account” what he called Ukraine’s request for talks between Zelensky and Putin.
Medinski also said that the negotiators agreed that "each side should present its vision of a possible future ceasefire and present it in detail."
"After such a vision is presented, we believe it would be appropriate, as also agreed, to continue our negotiations," he said.
Expectations for progress were low in the first direct peace talks since the failed negotiations held in the first two months of the 2022 invasion.
The talks capped a hectic week of diplomacy fueled by Trump's efforts to mediate an end to the war, which has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides and a growing number of Ukrainian civilians.
Moscow has rejected calls for a full and extended 30-day ceasefire, saying a truce can only come as a result of negotiations, and Putin has rejected Zelensky's invitation to hold their first face-to-face meeting since 2019.
"This week we had a real opportunity to take important steps towards ending this war. If only Putin had not been afraid to come to Turkey," Zelensky said in Tirana.
Russia's goals remain unchanged
Putin launched the full-scale invasion eight years after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sparked a war in eastern Donbas in 2014. Russia now holds about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, but is far from Putin's goal of subjugating the country, independent since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The only previous direct peace talks broke down in the spring of 2022 as the sides bickered over the main points of contention and amid revelations of atrocities committed by Russian forces in Bucha, a town they abandoned as they retreated from northern Ukraine after failing to capture Kiev.
In those negotiations, Russia sought a deal that analysts said would mean Kiev's capitulation, leaving Ukraine as a permanently neutral country with a small and powerless military, limited sovereignty, and little or no access to Western security support.
Russian officials have suggested that Moscow has not scaled back its objectives despite the failure to capture Kiev and slow progress on the battlefield, where small territorial gains have been achieved at a high cost in Russian casualties.
Some experts say a ceasefire on the current front line would be a blow to Putin's reputation at home, but the Kremlin may still be forced to accept it if the West increases economic pressure on Russia, including significantly expanding sanctions on its oil-transporting fleet.
Russia 'not serious' about peace, says Zelensky
The Kremlin called the May 16 talks a "continuation" of the 2022 talks. Medinsky also led the Russian team at those talks. Zelensky described the Russian delegation as "decorative" and said its composition showed "they are not serious enough about the negotiations."
"The Russians want to link today's negotiations to 2022," Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said on May 16. "But the only thing that connects these negotiations is the city of Istanbul. And nothing more. All attempts by the Russians to link today's negotiations to 2022 will fail."
With Russia rejecting calls for a ceasefire, the European Union is preparing a new package of sanctions against Moscow, including measures that focus on Russia's financial sector and its lucrative energy exports.
"We will increase the pressure," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Tirana.
Putin has repeatedly said that any peace agreement must address what Russia calls the "root causes" of the war, a term that evokes demands Russia made before launching a full-scale invasion: that Ukraine become a neutral state, dramatically reduce its military and abandon its aspirations to join NATO, among other things.
In addition, Moscow said that Kiev and the West must accept Russian sovereignty over Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, four partially Russian-occupied Ukrainian mainland regions that Putin baselessly declared part of Russia in September 2022.
"Putin will not end this war, at least not under reasonable conditions. But what he is interested in is building new relations with the American administration," Kirill Martinov, editor-in-chief of the Latvia-based media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe, told Current Time on May 16.
If the negotiations fail and Europe "fails to achieve some kind of joint action against Putin... then Ukraine will be the main loser - because Putin, once again, will essentially be able to continue the war," Martynov said.
He also said that Putin's goal is "to continue the war while avoiding a full-scale conflict with Trump."
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