The first talks in three years on Friday were proposed by Putin, but he decided against travelling there himself, instead sending a second-tier delegation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Turkey after Putin proposed the meeting and before the Russian president decided to skip out.

Trump said there was unlikely to be a peace breakthrough for Ukraine until he personally got together with Putin.

“Look, nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

“He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there and I don’t believe anything’s going to happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together, but we’re going to have to get it solved because too many people are dying.”

At a separate media conference, Trump stated: “I actually said, ‘Why would he (Putin) go if I’m not going’, cos I wasn’t going to go.

“I would go, but I wasn’t planning to go, and so I said ‘I don’t think he’s going to go if I don’t go’ and that’s turned out to be right — but we have people there.”

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Zelensky described the Russian delegation as second-rate and demanded the presence of Putin at the talks.

“We can’t be running around the world looking for Putin,” Zelensky said after meeting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.

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“I feel disrespect from Russia. No meeting time, no agenda, no high-level delegation — this is personal disrespect. To Erdogan, to Trump,” Zelensky told reporters.

Zelensky said he himself would also not go to Istanbul and that his team’s mandate was to discuss a ceasefire.

The US is sending Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will meet with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and a Ukrainian delegation.

But Rubio said he did not have high expectations for the talks.

The top US diplomat described the current state of the talks to end the war as a “logjam,” and said Trump was the only person who could break it.

Rubio said the level of the officials sent by Russia was not indicative of a breakthrough, but said Trump was willing to stick with talks as long as it takes to achieve peace.

When asked if any efforts were underway to bring Trump and Putin together, Rubio said Trump was going to make decisions once his Middle East trip ends.

“Probably we’ll wait until he finishes with his trip … We’ll wait to see what happens tomorrow, and then those decisions will be made about a timeline,” he said.

The Russian foreign ministry rejected criticism about the delegation that had been sent to Istanbul.

The most qualified experts have been dispatched to Turkey, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, according to the state-run news agency TASS.

These experts, she said, are prepared and competent to discuss all topics.

“International law, certainly. The situation on the ground, certainly. Questions of combat operations, certainly,” she explained.

It remains unclear whether and when the first direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in three years will take place.

The Russian delegation is at the hotel, waiting for developments, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, citing an unnamed source.

TASS, also citing an anonymous source, reported that negotiations would not begin until Friday.

The Russian delegation’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, was also involved in the fruitless negotiations in 2022 shortly after the war began.

Ukraine backs an immediate, unconditional 30-day ceasefire but Putin has said he first wants to start talks at which the details of such a truce could be discussed.

More than three years after its full-scale invasion, Russia has the advantage on the battlefield and says Ukraine could use a pause in the war to call up extra troops and acquire more foreign weapons.