Zelensky meets Erdogan in Istanbul as November talks loom

Visit to Turkey

President Volodymyr Zelensky is on a working visit to Turkey on Saturday, 31 October. The trip was announced in advance by Burhanettin Duran, head of the Turkish presidency’s Directorate of Communications. “Upon the invitation of our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy will pay a working visit to our country on 31 October 2026,” he wrote on X. The meeting is taking place in Istanbul.

According to Duran, the two sides will discuss steps to further develop bilateral cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine, as well as regional and international developments, above all Russia’s war against Ukraine and the security situation in the Black Sea. Zelensky confirmed the trip in his evening address on 30 October: “There will be important negotiations in Turkey.” The outcome of the meeting had not been announced at the time of publication.

Ukrinform recalls that Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited Ukraine in July. After that meeting Zelensky said Ankara had confirmed its readiness to work towards a leaders-level meeting to end the war.

“Formats discussed for so long” in November

In the same address the president said he hoped for a diplomatic breakthrough in the coming weeks. “We expect that in November we will be able to reach the formats that have been discussed for so long,” Zelensky said. He did not specify whether he meant a trilateral technical meeting of Ukrainian, US and Russian teams or talks at the level of leaders.

A day earlier Zelensky said Ukraine was waiting for the United States to set a date for trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi and hoped they would take place before 10 November. US President Donald Trump said on 28 October that a meeting between Zelensky and Vladimir Putin should take place soon.

Trump: “stupid people” wanted sanctions

Meanwhile a statement in Washington is unlikely to please Kyiv. At a White House meeting with Stephen Hubbard, an American freed from Russian detention, Trump said: “People, stupid people, wanted me to impose sanctions on Russia… I think they laugh at sanctions,” according to Ukrinform’s correspondent. He argued that sanctions could have prevented Hubbard’s return home and repeated several times that the American had been treated “fairly well” in custody. ABC News notes that the real circumstances of Hubbard’s release are more complicated than the White House describes.

Sikorski to Lavrov: “Enough”

A two-day meeting of G20 foreign ministers opened in the US state of Georgia, with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov among the invitees. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told reporters he had the same message for his Russian counterpart as he delivered earlier at the UN Security Council: “Sergei, tell your boss that enough is enough. Five years of this bloody war — it has to end.”

Sikorski called Lavrov’s invitation “uncomfortable” for Warsaw and confirmed there would be no joint photo of participants with Lavrov. Commenting on a Reuters report that Pentagon officials had allegedly urged some European NATO members to soften their rhetoric towards Russia, he asked how one should “politely respond” to the killing of passengers at Dnipro railway station and to ballistic missile strikes on power plants.

What next

The key question for the coming days is whether the diplomatic activity in Istanbul and at the G20 can be turned into a specific date for trilateral talks. Kyiv hopes for progress as early as November.