Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that US President Donald Trump has expressed his readiness to come to Turkey to work on peace with Ukraine if Putin comes, TRT Global reports.
“The Turkish president revealed details of his conversation with US leader Donald Trump, saying that he is ready to come to participate in peace talks. “If Russian President Vladimir Putin comes to Istanbul or Ankara for a settlement, I will also come to Istanbul or Ankara,” Erdogan quoted Trump as saying to reporters on board the plane after returning from the Netherlands.
The Turkish leader emphasized his country’s readiness to take decisive steps for a peaceful settlement: “If we need to dig a well with a needle to find a solution, we will do it.”
Erdogan spoke about his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a dinner with the King of the Netherlands on June 24, where the support of Ukraine’s allies and the outcome of the war were the main topics of discussion.
During a press conference on Saturday night, Putin proposed starting direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, according to Reuters.
Putin ignored the proposal by Ukraine and European leaders, supported by the US, for a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday, May 12.
Instead, he said that a ceasefire could be discussed during direct talks.
“He said that Russia is offering direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in an attempt to ‘eliminate the root causes of the conflict’ and ‘achieve the restoration of long-term, lasting peace,’” Reuters quoted the Kremlin leader as saying.
As noted by the agency, Putin resorted to accusations against the Ukrainian authorities that are traditional for his rhetoric. In particular, he complained about the unsuccessful negotiations in Istanbul in 2022.
As reported, on Saturday, May 10, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland, the UK, and Ukraine, following a meeting in Kyiv, adopted a joint statement proposing that Russia cease fire completely and unconditionally from Monday, May 12, for at least 30 days. In the event of Russia’s refusal to accept the proposed ceasefire, they agreed to impose tougher sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, targeting fossil fuels, oil, and the shadow fleet. The joint statement also mentioned the 17th package of EU sanctions and continued work on the effective use of frozen Russian assets.
Saudi Arabia has supported the idea of holding a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on its territory and reaffirmed its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine, the press service of the Saudi Foreign Ministry reported.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia highly appreciates the telephone conversation held between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12, as well as the announcement of the possibility of holding a summit between their esteemed two presidents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” the statement said.
The ministry added that the Kingdom welcomes the summit in Saudi Arabia and reaffirms its ongoing efforts to achieve a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine.
It is noted that on March 3, 2022, Crown Prince and Prime Minister of the KSA Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, during telephone conversations with Putin and Zelensky, “expressed the Kingdom’s readiness to provide its mediation services to achieve a political settlement of the crisis.”
“Over the past three years, the Kingdom has continued these efforts, in particular by organizing numerous meetings on this issue,” the Foreign Ministry added.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are likely to meet for the first time in Saudi Arabia, Trump said on Wednesday in the Oval Office in front of the media.
“Trump and Putin will meet, probably meet for the first time in Saudi Arabia, he told us in the Oval Office,” a CBS News correspondent at the White House said on social media site X.
Earlier it was reported that Trump had a conversation with Putin on Wednesday and almost immediately afterwards Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Source: https://x.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1889779512574964057
Switzerland is ready to host a meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin if they request it, Le Temps reported on Saturday, citing a Swiss Foreign Ministry spokesman.
“Since the Burgenstock summit, Ukraine, Russia and the United States have been regularly informed of our readiness to support any diplomatic efforts aimed at establishing peace,” Le Temps quoted Nicolas Bideau, head of the Foreign Ministry’s communications department, as saying.
Vladimir Putin might have lost a slice of revenue after Kyiv closed its gas pipeline to Russian supplies, but Moscow already has alternatives for shipping the fuel that stand to shield it from any serious economic hit.
Russia plans to expand exports of liquefied natural gas while routing pipeline gas to other buyers like China.
“We will continue to increase our share on world LNG markets” even as sanctions aim to halt this growth, Putin said during his annual press conference on Dec 19. He also expressed confidence that Russian gas-giant Gazprom PJSC would survive the end of pipeline transport through Ukraine.
Despite calls to ban such supplies, Europe is buying a record amount of the super-chilled fuel from Russia, predominantly from the Novatek PJSC-led Yamal LNG plant.
The volumes have surpassed what Russia was selling through Ukraine before Jan. 1, when Kyiv, refusing to allow any more transit that funds Moscow’s war machine, closed off the five-decade old route through its territory.
The situation highlights how hard it is for Europe to cut ties with Russia, which over the last decade entrenched itself as a key commodities supplier to the continent. It also casts a spotlight on how the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has forced Russia to keep readjusting its trading network. Still, Moscow has shown that even when one avenue to markets closes, there are often others still open for Russia.
Russia’s LNG exports overall reached a record last year, ship-tracking data show.
Before the invasion, Russia used to sell about 155 billion cubic meters of pipeline gas to Europe per year. In 2024, the country exported roughly 30 billion cubic meters of gas to the region, with over a half of volumes going via Ukraine.
Since most of Russia’s piped gas had already stopped flowing to Europe, the discontinuation of the Ukrainian line won’t affect the economy much, said Tatiana Orlova, an economist at Oxford Economics.
“Europe will still need gas as all its efforts to wean itself from Russian gas have not been successful,” Orlova said. “It will probably end up buying more Russian LNG to make up for the drop in natural gas imports from Russia,” she said.
Gazprom sold about $6 billion worth of gas through Ukraine in 2024, Bloomberg calculations show. Yet, most economists and researchers foresee a muted effect on the economy from being deprived of those sales. Russia will lose an equivalent of about 0.2% to 0.3% of gross domestic product, according to various analyst estimates.
“The figures are too small to make a dent in Putin’s war machine,” David Oxley, an economist at Capital Economics said in a note last week. For comparison, Ukraine stands to lose roughly 0.5% of GDP, he said, stemming from an end to the fees it collected for transit of the gas.
Slovakia, heavily reliant on Russian gas and also earning from transit fees, is set to lose 0.3% of GDP, according to his estimates.
On top of LNG sales, Russia also has other pipeline options for shipping gas that will help make up for the loss of the route through Ukraine.
Shipments to China, which is overtaking Europe as the largest market for Russia’s pipeline gas, were forecast to reach around a record 31 billion cubic meters in 2024. They are set to rise to 38 billion cubic meters this year as the Power of Siberia link has reached the full design capacity.
That would compensate for half of the volumes lost when transit via Ukraine ended, according to estimates by Sergey Vakulenko, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Gazprom may sell more through TurkStream, the direct gas pipeline between Russia and Turkey under the Black Sea that also helps supply some European clients. In 2025, Gazprom could sell 25 billion cubic meters to Turkey and 15 billion cubic meters to Europe through TurkStream, Vakulenko estimates.
Russia plans to re-direct some fuel to countries in Central Asia and will work to increase the capacity of a Soviet-era pipeline from Russia to Uzbekistan through Kazakhstan.
Politically, the gas issue gives the Kremlin an opportunity to demonstrate that Putin isn’t a pariah, said Sergei Markov, a political consultant close to the Kremlin.
“For Moscow, it is extremely important that the diplomatic blockade is being broken for the second time,” Markov said, referring to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s surprise visit to Moscow on Dec. 23 to discuss gas among other things. He was the second European leader to visit Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s trip in July.
Putin last month said that Russia is ready to ship gas to Europe, but he cautioned that any new deal would likely be complicated to reach, even given the rising prices from tighter supply now facing Europe.
Still, the plans for both pipeline gas and LNG may face challenges of their own. While Russia aims to launch exports via a second link to China in two years, talks for a third pipeline have stalled over disagreements about the terms.
Russia seeks to triple LNG exports to 100 million tons in 2035, from last year’s 33 million tons, but western sanctions on all key future projects and the LNG tanker fleet complicate that.
“The natural gas and LNG landscape has changed dramatically for Russia in the last three years,” said Claudio Steuer, an energy consultant and faculty member of IHRDC, Boston. It requires “far greater investment and effort for a less profitable business” now that Russia needs to search for business further afield with buyers that are more price sensitive.
Sanctions have already stifled Russia’s aims for growth in LNG. Novatek’s newest project, Arctic LNG 2, last year managed to start limited exports, but sanctions imposed by the US and its allies limited the plant’s access to ice-class tankers needed to navigate frigid northern waters and made foreign buyers reluctant to buy the shipments.
In 2025, the focus will be on what Donald Trump decides to do about sanctions on Russia. Muddying the picture are the US’s own ambitions to supply more of its LNG to Europe.
A ban on transshipping Yamal LNG cargoes in European ports could also complicate logistics for Russian supplies to Asia when the Northern Sea Route is closed, but sanctions may actually lead to more of that supply being sent to Europe instead.
