Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed holding \u201cdirect talks\u201d with Ukraine on Thursday in Istanbul, as European leaders and the United States attempt to put pressure on Moscow to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in order to bring an end to the three-year conflict. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe would like to start immediately, already next Thursday, May 15, in Istanbul, where they were held before and where they were interrupted,\u201d Putin said in a rare late-night televised address. He emphasized the talks should be held \u201cwithout any preconditions.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are set on serious negotiations with Ukraine,\u201d Putin said, adding they are intended to \u201celiminate the root causes of the conflict\u201d and \u201creach the establishment of a long-term, durable peace.\u201d <\/p>\n
The proposal came just hours after the leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland told Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday or face possible \u201cmassive sanctions,\u201d according to French President Emmanuel Macron, on a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv. <\/p>\n
The demand comes with the backing of the White House after a joint phone call with US President Donald Trump, the Europeans said. <\/p>\n
Shortly after the leaders called for a ceasefire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is \u201cresistant to any kind of pressure.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cEurope is actually confronting us very openly,\u201d Peskov said, adding that Putin supports the idea of a ceasefire \u201cin general,\u201d but \u201cthere are lots of questions\u201d about the recent proposal that still need answering. He did not expand on what these questions are. <\/p>\n
Putin said Sunday he would speak with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about holding talks with Kyiv. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed holding \u201cdirect talks\u201d with Ukraine on Thursday in Istanbul,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}