Putin offers talks with Ukraine on May 15 but skirts truce

Bloomberg News on May 10, 2025

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Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to hold direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, saying he didn’t rule out reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in the war.

“We’re in the mood for serious talks with Ukraine,” Putin said in late-night comments to reporters at the Kremlin. Russia was ready to “resume direct negotiations and I emphasize — without any preconditions.”

He offered the talks after Ukraine and European powers demanded that Russia join an “unconditional” 30-day ceasefire from Monday to allow negotiations on ending the war, saying they had backing from U.S. President Donald Trump for the ultimatum.

Putin didn’t indicate whether Russia agreed with the truce plan. A refusal by the Russian leader would trigger new sanctions targeting energy and the financial sector, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Kyiv on Saturday.

“We are in the mood for serious negotiations” to deal with the root causes of the conflict and establishing a lasting peace, Putin said. “We do not rule out that during these negotiations it will be possible to agree on some new truces, on a new ceasefire.”

Russia’s proposal to Ukraine is to resume direct negotiations, halted in late 2022, “without any preconditions,” Putin said, while seeking to blame Ukraine for previous ceasefire violations.

Putin said he’d be talking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to be in Turkey next week, a U.S. official said, as the country hosts a NATO foreign ministers meeting.

The ceasefire plan was announced after Zelenskyy met with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish premier Donald Tusk. The five leaders then discussed the proposal in a 20-minute call with Trump that was described as “warm” by a person familiar with the interaction.

The U.S. didn’t confirm any new stance by Trump, with a White House official saying the president has said economic sanctions are on the table if a ceasefire isn’t reached.

Kyiv meeting

“We have agreed that from Monday, May 12, a full and unconditional ceasefire for at least 30 days should start,” Zelenskyy told reporters. “Together, we demand this from Russia. We know that the U.S. is supporting us on this.”

“In case of violation of this ceasefire, we agreed that massive sanctions would be prepared and coordinated between Europeans and Americans,” Macron said.

In Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Republican ally of Trump, has said he has the commitment of 72 colleagues for a bill that would enact “bone-crushing” new sanctions on Moscow and tariffs on countries that buy its oil, gas and other key products if Putin doesn’t engage in serious talks to halt the war.

The punishments would include a 500% tariff on imports from countries that buy Russian oil, petroleum products, natural gas or uranium, according to a draft seen by Bloomberg News.

Russia is open to dialogue on settling the conflict in Ukraine but is “resistant to any kinds of pressure,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Saturday.

Earlier, Peskov dismissed the European threat of greater economic pressure, telling state television that “it’s pointless to frighten us with these sanctions” when Russia had already learned to live with existing restrictions enacted since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It’s “impossible” to discuss a truce with Ukraine without taking into account a large number of nuances set out by Russia, Peskov said, according to the Interfax news service.

Diplomacy to end the longest and bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II has intensified after several meetings between European, U.S. and Ukrainian envoys, including in London and Paris. Those leaders held another series of phone calls this week, and Zelenskyy met Trump at the Vatican on April 26 on the sidelines of the funeral of Pope Francis.

Putin has shown no sign he’s willing to halt the invasion and has maintained maximalist positions for any ceasefire. That includes Russian control of four eastern and southeastern Ukrainian regions it annexed illegally in the 2022 full-scale invasion but doesn’t fully occupy.

The U.S. has floated proposals that would broadly freeze the conflict, leaving most Russian-occupied territory in Moscow’s hands. The Trump administration is also prepared to recognize the Ukrainian region of Crimea that Putin annexed in 2014 as Russian, Bloomberg reported in April.

Trump on Thursday called for a monthlong unconditional truce to create space for direct negotiations to end the war. The U.S. and its partners would “impose further sanctions” if the ceasefire wasn’t observed, he said.

Asked Friday in the Oval Office if he had a message for Putin, Trump said: “I have a message for both parties: Get this war ended.”