Zelenskyy said he was ready to meet Putin in Turkey on Thursday after Trump told him to immediately accept the Kremlin leader’s proposal of direct talks.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the United States’ position on the Russia–Ukraine war is reaching a point where an “immediate cease-fire” can be declared between the two sides, according to the department.
During a call with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Rubio said the “top priority remains bringing an end to the fighting and an immediate cease-fire” in the Russia–Ukraine conflict, according to a State Department readout of the call.
Rubio also spoke with new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, with the U.S. secretary of state saying that regarding Ukraine, the two “discussed the meeting between the chancellor, [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron, [British] Prime Minister [Kier] Starmer, [Polish] Prime Minister [Donald] Tusk, and [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy in Kyiv and our shared goal of ending the war in Ukraine.”
Lammy is scheduled to host European delegations in London on Monday for discussions on Ukraine and European security initiatives.
The European leaders over the past weekend joined Zelenskyy in demanding a 30-day cease-fire from Monday, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a counter-proposal to instead hold the first direct Ukraine–Russia talks since the early months of the 2022 invasion.
The calls come as U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday that he has doubts that Ukraine will reach a deal to end the conflict with Russia and called on top Ukrainian officials to negotiate with Russian officials in Turkey soon.
“I’m starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Putin,” Trump stated. “President Putin of Russia doesn’t want to have a Cease Fire Agreement with Ukraine, but rather wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the bloodbath.”
The meeting would mean that the United States, Europe, and the two countries at war would then be “able to determine whether or not a deal is possible,” he said.
“And if it is not, European leaders, and the U.S., will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly!” the president said in his post.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said in a post on X that he was ready to meet Putin in Turkey on Thursday after Trump told him publicly to immediately accept the Kremlin leader’s proposal of direct talks.
“We await a full and lasting ceasefire, starting from tomorrow. … I will be waiting for Putin in Turkiye on Thursday,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, using another way to spell the country of Turkey’s name. “Personally, I hope that this time the Russians will not look for excuses.”
Last week, both Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of cease-fire violations during a three-pay period between May 8 and May 10 that Russia declared to mark the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Ukraine’s military, in its account late on May 9 of battlefield operations, said 162 armed clashes had been recorded over the past 24 hours, with the Kremlin cease-fire in effect, along with 22 air strikes and 956 drone attacks. But a Russian Defense Ministry account said it had registered four attempts by Ukrainian forces to smash through the border into the Kursk and Belgorod regions in the past week.
Reuters contributed to this report.