Russia to hold new talks with U.S. on Thursday – but no peacekeepers in Ukraine

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that preparations were being made for expert-level talks between Russia and the United States to follow up on a high-level meeting last week and an earlier call between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated that there was an understanding that Trump and Putin should meet in person after thorough preparation, but said there were no details yet on when and where this would happen.

He said the two leaders could speak again by phone if needed, but there were no current plans for this.

"Contacts are being prepared at the expert level through the ministries of foreign affairs," Peskov said, without providing any further details.

Later on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed Russian and U.S. delegations would meet in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss how to restore their respective diplomatic missions. Moscow has had no ambassador in Washington since the previous envoy, Anatoly Antonov, left his post last October.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said high-level teams would work to restore the countries' diplomatic missions in Washington and Moscow as part of negotiations towards ending the conflict in Ukraine.

Trump has expressed a desire to bring about a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war as soon as possible. His rapid moves to repair relations with Moscow, reversing the policy of the previous administration of Joe Biden, have raised fears in Kyiv and among its European allies that they could be sidelined.

Putin this week tempered expectations for a quick deal on Ukraine, saying that U.S.-Russia contacts would initially focus on repairing trust between Moscow and Washington.

Minerals and peacekeepers

Kremlin spokesman Peskov declined to comment on a reported minerals agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine that Trump has said would allow the U.S. taxpayer to recoup money that Washington has provided to Ukraine in the course of the war.

Peskov noted reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would visit Trump on Friday, saying "Whether it will be (to sign) the aforementioned agreement or something else, we'll see. There have been no official statements on this matter yet."

Foreign Minister Lavrov said that Russia was not considering agreeing to European peacekeepers deploying in Ukraine, and that the idea was a "deceit" aimed at allowing Ukraine to rearm. Trump said this week that Putin had told him that Russia was comfortable with the idea of European peacekeepers.

Speaking in Doha, where he had met the emir of Qatar, Lavrov also said that resettling the Palestinian people from the Gaza Strip to other regions would be a time bomb for the Middle East.

Trump has announced a plan to permanently resettle the population of more than two million Palestinians from the strip and to turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East" under U.S. control.