Trump may join Russia-Ukraine talks

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Monday raised the prospect of joining talks between Russia and Ukraine in Turkiye on Thursday.

Trump will be visiting Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. He said, "I think you may have a good result out of the Thursday meeting in Turkiye between Russia and Ukraine. I was thinking about flying over. I don't know where I'm going to be on Thursday. I've got so many meetings, but I was thinking about actually flying over there. There's a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen, but we've got to get it done," he told reporters at the White House.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed the possibility and expressed hope that Russian President Putin will not "evade the meeting". "All of us in Ukraine would appreciate it if President Trump could be there with us at this meeting in Turkiye. This is the right idea. We can change a lot," Zelensky said on X. He added that Turkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "can indeed host highest-level meeting".

Russia, meanwhile, launched more than 100 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine in nighttime attacks, the Ukrainian air force said Monday, after the Kremlin effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in the more than three-year war, but reiterated that it would take part in possible peace talks later this week without preconditions. There was no direct response from the Kremlin, meanwhile, to Zelensky's challenge for Putin to meet him for face-to-face peace talks in Turkiye on Thursday. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to say who might travel to Istanbul from the Russian side. "Overall, we're determined to seriously look for ways to achieve a long-term peaceful settlement. That is all," Peskov said.

(This is a Reuters story)