Ukraine hopes to revive prisoner-of-war exchanges with Russia by the end of the year, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday while speaking alongside Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at a briefing in Ankara.
"Of course, we talked substantively about the situation in diplomacy. And now many processes have become more active, and we are trying to ensure that all activity is aimed specifically at peace," Zelensky said.
A senior Ukrainian official told Reuters that Kyiv had received "signals" about a set of US proposals to end the war that Washington has discussed with Russia. Ukraine has had no role in preparing the proposals, the source said.
Signs of a renewed US-led push to end the war triggered the biggest jump in Ukraine's government bond prices in months on Wednesday.
No face-to-face talks have taken place between Kyiv and Moscow since a meeting in Istanbul in July, and Russian forces have pressed on with Moscow's nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, killing 25 people in strikes overnight.
Efforts to revive peace negotiations appear to be gaining momentum, although Moscow has shown no sign of changing its terms for ending the war.
Ukraine's top priority is ending war
Zelensky met President Tayyip Erdogan after visits to Greece, France, and Spain that went ahead despite a political crisis in Ukraine over a corruption scandal in which parliament dismissed the energy and justice ministers on Wednesday.
Zelensky has remained focused on the war effort and said on Tuesday that he was preparing to "reinvigorate negotiations" and discuss with Erdogan how to achieve a "just peace" in Ukraine.
"Doing everything possible to bring the end of the war closer is Ukraine's top priority," he said on Tuesday.
Russian forces control about 19% of Ukrainian territory and are grinding forward, while carrying out frequent attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure as winter approaches.
Turkey, a NATO member that has remained close to both sides, hosted an initial round of peace talks in the early weeks of the war in 2022, the only such talks until this year when US President Donald Trump launched a new bid to end the fighting.
The Kremlin said Russian representatives would not be involved in the talks but that President Vladimir Putin was open to conversations with the United States and Turkey about the results of the discussions.
Axios reported on Tuesday that Washington has been secretly working on a roadmap to end the war in consultation with Russia.
Asked about the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday: "So far, there are no innovations on this that can be reported to you."
Putin's conditions
Putin has long demanded Kyiv renounce plans to join the US-led NATO military alliance and withdraw its troops from four provinces Moscow claims as part of Russia. Moscow has given no indication that it has dropped any of those demands, and Ukraine says it will not accept them.
A US delegation led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Kyiv on a "fact-finding mission," the US embassy in Kyiv said. Army Chief of Staff General Randy George is also in the delegation, and he and Driscoll will meet Zelensky on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
A Turkish source said US special envoy Steve Witkoff could also visit Turkey, but there was no announcement of such a visit from US officials. Another source, at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, said Turkish officials would meet only Zelensky, and Witkoff was not expected to be part of the Ankara meetings.