The meeting was held at the headquarters of the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul.
U.S. and Russian diplomats held talks in Turkey on Feb. 27 to discuss normalizing the operation of their respective embassies after years of mutual diplomatic expulsions and diplomatic tensions.
The meeting, held at the headquarters of the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, was part of broader efforts to restore diplomatic and economic ties following rounds of embassy staff reductions, office closures, and other restrictions in recent years.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the talks in Istanbul followed an understanding reached during President Donald Trump’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as discussions between senior Russian and U.S. officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In Riyadh, both sides agreed to work toward ending the war in Ukraine and improving diplomatic relations, with embassy staffing restoration being a key part of the negotiations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, speaking at her weekly press briefing on Thursday, emphasized that the Istanbul talks were just the beginning of broader diplomatic efforts.
“We expect that today’s meeting will be the first in a series of such expert consultations that will bring us and the American side closer to overcoming the differences that have arisen, strengthening confidence-building measures, and so on,” Zakharova said.
The president of the European Council, António Costa, expressed appreciation to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for hosting the talks.
“In these difficult times, we appreciate Turkey’s role as an important global and regional player and seek to work closely together to ensure lasting peace in Ukraine and support an inclusive and democratic transition in Syria,” Costa wrote in a post on X.
The Istanbul meeting came on the same day that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the White House in Washington to meet with President Donald Trump to persuade him that European leaders should be part of the negotiations if the peace is to last.
Trump said Thursday that talks to end the Ukraine war are “very well advanced” and expressed confidence that Putin will “keep his word” and not restart hostilities if a truce is reached.
Trump also shut down any speculation about the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, saying that Kyiv’s aspirations to join the transatlantic military pact were a key reason why Russia invaded.
“It’s just not going to happen. That’s what started this whole thing,” Trump told reporters at the White House. He added that he will push Russia to give up as much occupied Ukrainian land as possible in the peace talks with Putin, “but on the NATO [issue], that’s just … not going to happen.”
Meanwhile, Putin addressed top officials of its Federal Security Service on Feb. 27, expressing optimism about the early exchanges with the Trump administration, saying they “inspire certain hopes.”
“There is reciprocal determination to work toward the restoration of relations between the countries, a gradual solution of the colossal backlog of systemic, strategic problems in the world architecture,” he said, per Russian state media Tass.
Putin also praised the Trump administration’s approach, describing it as pragmatic and realistic, while contrasting it with the policies of previous U.S. administrations. He said that the current administration was moving away from the “messianic ideological clichés of their predecessors,” which he argued had contributed to the crisis in international relations and, by extension, the Ukraine war.
The Russian leader has repeatedly said that NATO’s eastward expansion over the years has brought the alliance unacceptably close to Russia’s borders, undermining regional security.
This view is rejected by countries on NATO’s eastern flank in Europe, who say that membership in the defensive military alliance is the only thing that keeps an increasingly assertive Russia at bay as it expands its sphere of influence to countries like Belarus and Moldova.