By Yaroslav Trofimov and Michael R. Gordon

A suggestion by the Trump administration's top negotiator that a Ukraine peace deal would be based on talks conducted in Istanbul nearly three years ago has buoyed Russian officials and spooked Ukraine and its backers.

To Kyiv, recent remarks by Steve Witkoff appeared to embrace the Kremlin's key, and incorrect, talking point over the past three years: that Ukraine and Russia were about to strike a peace deal in Istanbul, and that Kyiv walked away from an agreement under pressure from Western politicians, such as then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demanded that any future peace talks be based on a return to the Istanbul parameters, which in Moscow's interpretation foresee a sharp cut in Ukraine's military, a ban on foreign weapons and troops, and a Russian veto on Western security assistance in case of renewed conflict. Ukraine refuses to return to that draft, which was never completed or approved by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

"We came very very close to signing something, and I think we will be using that framework as a guidepost to get a peace deal done between Ukraine and Russia, and I think that this will be an amazing day," Witkoff said in a CNN appearance Sunday about the Istanbul talks, which were held in late March 2022.

Witkoff's comments weren't intended to be an endorsement of the Russian view that Ukraine should be largely demilitarized or that Russia should have a veto over foreign military support for Kyiv or security assurances for Ukraine, according to a person familiar with his thinking. His view is that the two parties were close to a deal in Istanbul and that the Trump administration didn't need to reinvent the wheel, the person said. The U.S. approach should be to take the framework from that 2022 negotiating effort and adapt them to the current circumstances, including by reflecting the changed situation on the battlefield, the person said.

Witkoff also didn't intend his comments to be an endorsement of capping the Ukrainian military at a low level of troops, the person said. In fact, the U.S. believes that Ukraine needs security safeguards, the person said, adding that the Trump administration and its interlocutors would have conversations about what that means and which nations could provide them.

The White House's National Security Council didn't reply to questions about what Witkoff meant by a return to the Istanbul framework.

The comments from Witkoff came ahead of an expected meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over a deal to give the U.S. rights to the country's mineral resources. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was expected to press Trump over a U.S. "backstop" London is seeking to help European troops maintain the peace if an agreement to end the war were eventually reached.

The Istanbul talks were convened as Russian tanks were on the Kyiv ring road, a culmination of negotiations that began shortly after the Feb. 24, 2022, Russian invasion. They reflected the battlefield situation when Ukraine's statehood was on the verge of collapse, and Russia was dictating terms for a surrender.

Russian troops, however, were defeated around Kyiv and the rest of northern Ukraine just as negotiators gathered in the Turkish city, and Ukraine has since then reclaimed additional areas of Kharkiv and Kherson regions. No documents were signed in Istanbul, and the two sides were wide apart on key issues.

Zelensky ordered an end to these talks once Ukrainian troops found hundreds of executed civilians in the town of Bucha near Kyiv following the Russian retreat. He has since demanded a full Russian withdrawal from occupied regions of Ukraine and a prosecution of Russian war crimes. Last December, he described the Istanbul drafts as "a Russian ultimatum."

"From Ukraine's standpoint, Istanbul terms mean a capitulation and an end to our state," said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government think tank in Kyiv. "If the Trump administration cuts off aid, the situation will be difficult but not catastrophic. But if we agree to disarm, this will be the end of us, and we are not idiots and won't make the same mistake again."

The resurrection of the Istanbul process by the Trump administration, Ukrainian officials and their allies say, could give Putin a political victory in Ukraine even though he hasn't actually been able to achieve his war aims on the battlefield.

While Russian troops have been on the offensive since the summer of 2023, losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers by Western estimates, they have failed to make major advances or seize large population centers. The areas of Ukraine under Russian occupation have increased from just under 18% to just over 18% in that year and a half, while Ukraine gained control of a sliver of Russia's Kursk region.

The negotiating teams in Istanbul didn't have the authority to make binding decisions, and there were still wide divergences between Russian and Ukrainian positions on key issues at the time the process ended.

One major area of disagreement was the cap imposed on the size of the Ukrainian military, with Russia demanding a limit of 85,000 troops and Kyiv insisting on 250,000. Another disagreement was on the kind and quantity of weapons that Kyiv would be able to keep. Ukraine currently has nearly a million armed men and women defending the country, and an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry provided by the West, including F-16 aircraft and missiles that can strike deep into Russia.

Another area of disagreement was the Russian demand that any security guarantees provided to Ukraine be subject to a veto by Moscow -- rendering them meaningless. Russia also demanded making Russian an official language in Ukraine and wide-ranging legislative changes to officially promote its vision of Ukrainian and Soviet history.

From Kyiv's standpoint today, agreeing to any limits on the size of its armed forces and on the kinds of weapons that its military operates would be suicidal.

"Accepting such terms is just an invitation for another war, but a much more dramatic one because next time Russia won't repeat the same mistakes again," said former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, who still advises the government.

Even after hostilities end, Ukraine will maintain armed forces at the maximal size that is required to deter another Russian invasion, Zelensky said as he prepared to meet Trump on Friday. "I believe in our army, and it will be one of our most important security guarantees," he said.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration has a detailed strategy for how to end the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Witkoff has talked about building on the Istanbul framework, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an interview with Fox News, suggested that Ukraine needed to maintain strength in any peace deal.

"What Ukraine needs really is a deterrent," he said. "They need to make it costly for anyone to come after them again in the future."

According to European officials, Britain and France are looking for a U.S. "backstop" that would entail some degree of military support for a European force of some 30,000 troops that would police a future cease-fire in Ukraine.

The U.S. wouldn't be asked to put troops on the ground in Ukraine and this support, European officials say, might take various forms such as U.S. air defenses that are operated from countries outside Ukraine, the provision of air-defense systems to the European forces in Ukraine, heavy lift to transport European peacekeepers and their equipment, intelligence support and long-range U.S. missile systems to protect them.

Any such military involvement by Western nations would be incompatible with the Istanbul understandings as drafted in 2022, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that Moscow hasn't agreed to the idea.

President Trump has declined to say whether the U.S. might provide any indirect support for a prospective European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, saying a peace agreement needed to be hammered out first.

"I'm not going to make security guarantees beyond very much," Trump said during his cabinet meeting Wednesday. "But we're going to make sure everything goes well."

A senior Trump administration official said Thursday that the U.S. has ruled out putting boots on the ground in Ukraine but left open the possibility that some forms of indirect support might be open for discussion as long as U.S. troops weren't "in harm's way."

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 27, 2025 12:15 ET (17:15 GMT)

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