Talks in Istanbul between Turkey's top diplomat and a Russian delegation ended late on 15 May. The two sides will meet again on 16 May with the Ukrainians, a foreign ministry source said.

The meeting between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and the delegation led by Vladimir Medinsky at Istanbul's Dolmabahce Palace ended shortly before midnight.

"The meeting is over. Tomorrow there will be more talks in different formats," the source said. He said that "trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and Turkey" were on the agenda.

There will also be a round of talks between the US, Ukraine and Turkey, AFP reported.

"It has not yet been finally decided whether there will be a quadrilateral format" bringing together officials from the four countries, he added.

Russia and Ukraine were expected to meet on May 15 in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks in more than three years.

But as the day wore on, with no specific indication of the timing, it remained unclear when the countries would meet. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that the meetings would take place on May 16.

Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in the southern coastal city of Antalya, Rubio said he would meet Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga in Istanbul on May 16.

He also said a lower-level U.S. official would meet with the Russian delegation.

"I want to be frank, we don't have great expectations about what will happen tomorrow," Rubio said. But he expressed hope that Turkey would work to bring the two delegations closer together.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who arrived in Turkey hoping to meet with the top-level Russian delegation in Istanbul, stayed in Ankara instead. There he held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Because Russia showed up with a relatively low-level team, Zelensky decided to send his defense minister, Rustem Umerov, to lead the Ukrainian delegation.

Medinsky, who heads the Russian team, is an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He disputes Ukraine's right to exist and led the failed 2022 talks at the outset of the war. | BGNES