By ILLIA NOVIKOV
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will travel to Turkey this week in an attempt to jump-start negotiations on ending Russia’s full-scale invasion, which began nearly four years ago.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff will join Zelenskyy in Turkey, a senior Turkish official told The Associated Press, but the Kremlin said that Russia won’t be sending anyone.
The talks will be held in Ankara and will center on how to establish a ceasefire and a lasting settlement, as well as Ukraine-Turkey relations, Burhanettin Duran, Turkey’s head of presidential communications, said on the social platform X.
Turkey provided a setting for low-level talks between Ukraine and Russia earlier this year, though the only significant progress in Istanbul was on exchanging prisoners of war. U.S.-led international peace efforts have brought no breakthrough, either.
Zelenskyy said that he would be in Turkey on Wednesday, a day after visiting Spain where he hoped for pledges of new support on Tuesday.
“We are preparing to reinvigorate negotiations, and we have developed solutions that we will propose to our partners,” Zelenskyy said on social media, without providing details. “Doing everything possible to bring the end of the war closer is Ukraine’s top priority.”
Looming U.S. sanctions
U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to budge from his demands for putting an end to the war.
Heavy new American sanctions on Russia’s all-important oil industry, devised to push Putin to the negotiating table, are due to take effect on Friday. The sanctions against oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil seek to starve Putin’s war machine of cash and halt its grinding war of attrition, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that “there will be no Russian representative in Turkey” on Wednesday, although he insisted that Moscow is ready to negotiate.
“For now, these contacts are taking place without Russian participation. We will await information on what would actually be discussed in Istanbul,” Peskov said during his daily conference call with reporters.
Washington’s sanctions also carry the threat of secondary penalties against anyone violating them, raising the stakes for Putin. China and India are major importers of Russian oil.
Zelenskyy was meeting later Tuesday in Madrid with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and King Felipe VI, with a visit planned as well to Spain’s parliament.
Kicking off a busy week, the Ukrainian leader was in Paris on Monday where he signed a letter of intent to buy up to 100 Rafale warplanes from France, along with drones and ground-to-air systems.
Ukraine hits sites in Russia-occupied Donetsk
On the battlefield, Ukraine launched a surprise aerial attack on energy infrastructure in occupied parts of its eastern Donetsk region.
The Russian-appointed head of the partially occupied region, Denis Pushilin, on Tuesday morning reported an “unprecedented” Ukrainian attack that damaged two thermal power stations and left many areas without power. A day earlier, Pushilin also reported Ukrainian drones attacking energy infrastructure in the region, denying power to around 500,000 consumers. The occupied part of the region has also endured water shortages.
The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Maj. Robert Brovdi, published footage that he said showed strikes Tuesday on two thermal power plants located in the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk.
Ukrainian forces, despite being heavily outnumbered, are fighting hard to prevent Russia’s army from capturing any more of Donetsk.
In Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, meanwhile, a 17-year-old girl was killed and 10 other people were wounded in a Russian missile strike on the town of Berestyn, located about 110 kilometers (70 miles) from the Russian border, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russian drones sparked multiple fires in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro last night, injuring two people, said Vladyslav Haivanenko, the head of the regional military administration. The drones damaged six residential buildings, as well as the local offices of Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne, though the company said the building was empty at the time.
Corruption scandal dogs Zelenskyy
At home, Zelenskyy remains under political pressure over a $100 million embezzlement and kickback scandal involving top officials and Ukraine’s state nuclear power company. The scandal broke last week and brought the resignations of two members of Zelenskyy’s Cabinet.
Petro Poroshenko, a former Ukrainian president and the leader of the European Solidarity opposition party, demanded the dismissal of the entire Ukrainian government on Tuesday.
A dozen lawmakers from his party stood alongside him in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, holding up placards protesting corruption. Poroshenko and his supporters blocked any other speakers from going up, halting the parliamentary session.
Zelenskyy has pledged to weed out entrenched corruption, but has been dogged by graft scandals that have caused public outrage.
Zelenskyy said that he would meet with senior officials in his government on Thursday, as well as with the leadership of Ukraine’s Parliament and his political party, called Servant of the People.
Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
