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'Killing needs to stop,' says Marco Rubio as Russia-Ukraine peace talks start
Putin earlier proposed direct talks with Ukraine but then rejected speaking to Volodymyr Zelensky face-to-face and stayed away from a meeting in Istanbul
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the âkilling needs to stopâ as Russia and Ukraine held their first direct peace talks in three years.
Delegations from the two countries met in Istanbul, Turkey, for the meeting where there were reportedly no handshakes.
Hopes were low of any progress in ending the war as a Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov sat down with a low-level Russian team headed by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, according to Kyiv sources.
Earlier, Donald Trump called for a summit with Putin âas soon as we can set it upâ after the Russian president stayed away from the Ukraine peace talks in Turkey.
The US president pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Putin in a bid to break the deadlock over ending the war in Ukraine.
Trump stressed he would hold a meeting with Putin "as soon as we can set it upâ.
On the fourth-day of a visit to the Middle East, he added: âIt's time for us to just do it."
Donald Trump who has played down expectations of a breakthrough to end Putinâs war in Ukraine
PA Wire
Expectations for a major breakthrough in Istanbul, already low, were dented further on Thursday when Trump said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Putin.
The Russian president on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Turkey.
But he then rejected a challenge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet him in person, and instead has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to the talks.
Mr Zelensky said Putinâs decision not to attend but to send what he called a âdecorativeâ line-up showed the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy who has criticised Russia for not sending a more high-level team for peace talks in Turkey
PA Wire
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy criticised the âlow-levelâ delegation sent by Moscow.
Russia accused Ukraine of trying âto put on a showâ around the talks.
Moscow says it sees them as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the early weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul.
But the terms under discussion then, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russiaâs initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv.
They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraineâs military.
With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, having increasingly gained territory while suffering heavy losses, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede land abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.
As Trump has pushed for peace, Putinâs military has unleashed a series of deadly attacks on Kyiv and other cities, prompting an angry plea from the US president for Russia to stop the bloodshed.
But if Putin continues his war, it is far from clear that Trump will beef up support for Ukraine or hit Russia with tougher sanctions.
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