Russia douses Trump's eagerness for pope to host Ukraine talks

The U.S. and European leaders are placing their hopes in the Vatican to engage Russia and Ukraine in peace talks, after President Donald Trump said Pope Leo XIV had expressed interest in the idea. The Kremlin isn’t so keen.

Russian officials have no plans for leader Vladimir Putin to travel to the Vatican or anywhere else for talks now, and they’re focused instead on technical-level negotiations that began in Istanbul last week, according to people with knowledge of the situation, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.

The Kremlin expects those negotiations to resume in Istanbul, one of the people said.

There are “no agreements” to hold the next round of talks at the Vatican, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters Thursday.

Still, European officials say discussions are taking place on a role for the Vatican as a potential host or mediator of negotiations. Talks could happen as soon as next week, though it depends on Russia’s readiness to attend, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is sensitive.

U.S. officials are in contact with the Ukrainians to ensure the talks can take place, the people said. They’re also signaling to Russian counterparts that they’d prefer to avoid participation in the meeting by hardliners such as Putin’s aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led Moscow’s delegation in Istanbul, the people added.

Momentum for Papal engagement has accelerated since Monday’s two-hour phone call between Trump and Putin failed to win Russia’s commitment to a truce in Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.

Ukraine and European allies had expected Trump to announce sanctions if Putin refused to halt the war, but the U.S. leader declared instead that Kyiv and Moscow should “immediately start negotiations” toward a ceasefire and that he’d “back away” if no progress was made on a deal.

“The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social. “Let the process begin!”

Putin won’t travel to Italy, a NATO member state, because of security concerns, and Russia doesn’t regard the Vatican as neutral in the conflict, said Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close ties to the Kremlin.

The issue is complicated further by relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church led by Patriarch Kirill, a vocal supporter of Putin and the war in Ukraine. A 2016 meeting in Cuba between Kirill and Pope Francis was the first between the leaders of the Roman Catholic faith and the Russian Church since the Great Schism of 1054 that split eastern and western Christianity over theological differences.

The Russian Church opposes the Vatican’s involvement in the peace talks, regarding it as a historical rival in Ukraine that also failed to criticize the authorities’ closure of churches loyal to Moscow, according to people with knowledge of the issue.

Italy is a signatory to the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. In principle, at least, it would be obliged to arrest him if he came to Rome.

Even if all those hurdles were overcome, negotiations are far from reaching a deal that would require a summit meeting involving Trump, Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign an accord ending the war. Putin and Trump didn’t mention a summit on their phone call.

The Holy See has telegraphed the newly-enthroned Pope’s readiness to engage in diplomacy to end the war that’s now in its fourth year. Leo met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Monday, a day after Zelenskyy thanked the Vatican “for its willingness to serve as a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia,” in a message on the X platform.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “received confirmation from the Holy Father of the readiness to welcome the next round of talks between the parties in the Vatican,” in a phone call with the Pope on Tuesday, according to a statement from her office.

Meloni’s efforts to involve the Pope in peace initiatives “have also been jointly developed and endorsed by us,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters Thursday during a visit to Vilnius, Lithuania. A resolution to the war “must first of all consist of a ceasefire,” he said.

Friday’s meeting in Istanbul was the first face-to-face negotiation between Russia and Ukraine since soon after the February 2022 full-scale invasion. Those talks collapsed amid recriminations over a draft protocol of Russian demands for Ukraine’s subjugation.

Putin proposed the resumption of direct contacts and has indicated he regards the talks as a continuation of the earlier ones, where Russia’s negotiators were also led by Medinsky.

The Russian delegation repeated hardline demands for Ukraine to surrender four regions of the country’s south and east that the Kremlin claims as its territory but which its troops only partly occupy.

Russia considers Turkey the best venue to continue talks on a memorandum setting out conditions for a peace deal that Putin discussed with Trump on their call, according to three people close to the Kremlin.

The choice of Turkey and of representatives from the aborted 2022 talks is seen as Russia signaling that it’s ‘back to square one’ in negotiations, a senior European official said.

Zelenskyy and European countries have accused Putin of stalling the peace process in order to buy time to intensify his military offensive in Ukraine.

The Holy See has helped mediate conflicts globally, including hastening a 2014 normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations and in resolving a territorial dispute between Chile and Argentina in 1978 that had pushed the two countries to the brink of war. It has also been active in attempts at reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The Vatican as a platform for talks will be a very difficult choice for the Kremlin,” said Ksenia Luchenko, an independent religious affairs analyst. “If this is the only chance for Putin to have his mega deal with Trump, then he would probably go to the Vatican, but first he would try to offer all kinds of alternatives.”

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(With assistance from Alberto Nardelli, Arne Delfs, Donato Paolo Mancini, Andrea Palasciano, Michael Nienaber and Chris Miller.)

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