​​Turkish president says that Putin and Zelenskyy are not yet ready for meeting

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in China and a phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said that the parties are "not yet ready" for a meeting at the leaders’ level.

As reported by Reuters, Erdoğan spoke to journalists on board a plane returning from China, where he had met with Putin, and later phoned Zelenskyy.

He said that the talks in recent months between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul showed that the path to peace remains open.

Erdoğan noted that Türkiye supports a "raising the level of negotiations gradually" in order to turn hopes for peace into concrete results, adding that any initiative should eventually be considered at the leaders’ level, although the conditions for this have not yet been created.

On 29 August, the Kremlin repeated its reasons for avoiding a bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.

On 30 August, Zelenskyy stated that the time allotted for preparing the leaders’ meeting was used by Moscow for strikes on Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron believes that if the Kremlin leader continues to evade a meeting with the Ukrainian president – a meeting he had agreed to during a summit with Trump – this is something the US president cannot leave without a response.