The Ukrainian president was waiting for Putin in the Turkish capital Ankara after challenging Putin to face-to-face discussions.

Russia's Vladimir Putin spurned a challenge to meet face-to-face with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Turkey on Thursday (May 15), instead sending a second-tier delegation to planned peace talks, while Ukraine's president said his defence minister would head up Kyiv's team.

MUSTAFA KUTLAY is a Senior Lecturer at City St George’s, University of London, a Senior Scholar at Istanbul Policy Center, and a co-author, with Mina Toksoz and William Hale, of Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return.

A military coup in Turkey forces much of the PKK to flee to neighboring countries such as Syria and Lebanon, where the fighters train in the Bekaa Valley. Ocalan leaves a year earlier, in 1979. The PKK carries out its first armed attack against Turkish security posts, marking the start of its armed insurgency.

A meeting between Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky would have been the first between the two men since before Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, launching a war that by conservative estimates has resulted in well over one million dead and injured soldiers on both sides.