Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are likely to meet in Turkey soon for face-to-face peace talks, a Ukrainian official involved in the war talks said on Saturday.
Ukraine’s chief negotiator David Arakhamia told a local TV channel that the two leaders could meet soon as draft peace treaty documents reach an advanced stage, Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.
Arakhamia said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “called us and Vladimir Putin yesterday and he in turn seemed to confirm that they were ready to organize a meeting in the near future”.
“Neither the date nor the location are known, but we believe that the location will be Istanbul or Ankara with a high probability,” he continued.
The announcement came on the same day that Russian forces were largely withdrawing from the Kyiv area. Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Hanna Malyar said on Saturday that the entire region is now liberated from the Russian military, declaring on Facebook: “Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and the entire Kyiv region have been liberated from the invaders!”
The withdrawal came after Russian troops met stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces determined to hold the capital. After several weeks of failed attempts to capture the city, Moscow announced last week that its forces would instead focus their efforts on Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region.
“The initial Russian operation was a failure, and one of its key objectives — capturing Kiev — proved unattainable for Russian forces,” Michael Kofman, director of Russian studies at CNA, a research institute in Arlington, Virginia, told the New York Times on Saturday.
Still, Saturday’s retreat has exposed the grim remnants of six weeks of fighting in the town and surrounding villages. Photos and media reports from the region showed the remains of destroyed military tanks and buildings, abandoned military positions and the scattered bodies of soldiers and civilians. There were also reports of Russian soldiers looting and looting homes and stealing valuable electronics and other items on their way out, either to send home or to sell.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Ukrainians remain trapped in the city of Mariupol with little access to food or water as fighting continues in the southeast. Moscow’s main military targets are now likely to focus on Mariupol and gain further control of the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, experts recently told Newsweek.
“The Russians urgently need at least some achievements,” said former Defense Minister of Ukraine Andriy Zagorodnyuk. Andriy Ryzhenko, a retired naval captain and former deputy chief of staff of the Ukrainian Navy, added that the troops that left Kyiv “will now regroup and move to Donbass.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could soon meet face-to-face in Turkey. Here, on March 31, 2022, Putin chairs a meeting outside of Moscow. Mikhail KLIMENTYEV / SPUTNIK / AFP/Getty Images
Negotiations between delegates from both nations continued this week in Istanbul, Turkey. Putin and Zelenskyy have yet to meet face-to-face, and their eventual meeting could bring significant progress in ending the war.
According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 Ukrainian civilians have died in the war since the Russian invasion began in late February, while around 10 percent of the population has had to flee the country. Tens of thousands of soldiers were also killed and in some places Ukrainian towns and villages were decimated.
Newsweek contacted the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia for further comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.