Nick Schifrin:
It was a bit of a diplomatic dust-up today in Turkey. The Ukrainian and Russian delegations landed in different cities. The Russian delegation ended up waiting in Istanbul for a Ukrainian delegation that didn’t even show up.
And the two delegations were really lopsided. Zelenskyy was there in Turkey with his most senior aides, but Putin was a no-show and sent relatively mid-level officials, what Zelenskyy called a decorative group.
Despite all that, tomorrow, Turkey will host the first face-to-face meeting between Russia and Ukraine in some three years, since 2022. But, as we heard there, President Trump said the deal was only possible if he and President Putin sat in the same room. And today, we heard that echoed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State: We don’t have high expectations of what will happen tomorrow. And, frankly, at this point, I think it’s abundantly clear that the only way we’re going to have a breakthrough here is between President Trump and President Putin. It’s going to require that level of engagement to have a breakthrough in this matter.
I don’t think anything productive is actually going to happen from this point forward until they engage in a very frank and direct conversation, which I know President Trump is willing to do.
