Erdogan made the remarks after meeting with Putin in China and speaking with Zelensky by phone.

Erdogan told journalists that while negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul show the path to peace remains open, conditions for a leaders’ summit have not yet been created.

Yet, Turkey supports “raising the level of negotiations gradually,” the Turkish president added.

After the Aug. 15 summit with Putin in Alaska, U.S. President Donald Trump stated he was working to broker a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders.

Following Aug. 18 talks at the White House with European leaders and Trump, Zelensky said Kyiv is ready to enter unconditional high-level negotiations with Moscow.

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly voiced readiness for a direct meeting with Putin, urging the U.S. to impose tougher measures if Russia continues to avoid such talks.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has noted that a Zelensky-Putin meeting was “not ready at all,” accusing Ukraine of rejecting several preconditions and questioning Zelensky’s legitimacy.

A source in Ukraine’s President’s Office told the Kyiv Independent earlier that a face-to-face meeting between Zelensky and Putin will not happen unless the U.S. ups its pressure on the Russian leader.

Trump has stated that Putin avoids meeting Zelensky because “he doesn’t like him.”

The 10-percent rise comes as European members of NATO have committed to massively ramp up spending under pressure from US President Donald Trump.

“Europe is spending record amounts on defence to keep our people safe, and we will not stop there,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) said that of the money being spent this year, close to 130 billion euros was being spent on investments such as new weaponry.

European countries have stepped up spending sharply since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

A 150-billion-euro EU loan scheme intended to help countries ramp up defence spending has been fully subscribed, the European Commission said last week, with 19 of 27 member states applying for funds.

The SAFE plan enables member states to get cheaper loans backed by the EU’s central budget.

Numerous Western militaries and intelligence services have warned that Moscow could be ready to attack a NATO country within three to five years if the war in Ukraine ends.

But the return of Trump — who has long railed against the continent for underspending — to power this year has given Europe a fresh shove.

The mercurial US leader extracted a commitment from NATO allies to cough up five percent of their GDPs on security-related spending at a summit in July.

That headline figure breaks down as 3.5 percent on core defence spending and 1.5 percent on a looser range of areas such as infrastructure and cyber security.

“Meeting the new NATO target of 3.5 percent of GDP will require even more effort, spending a total of more than 630 billion euros a year,” EDA head Andre Denk said.

Denmark, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, has circulated a proposal requiring gas importers to provide national authorities with proof that their supplies do not originate in Russia, according to a document seen by Bloomberg.

The plan specifically raises concerns over gas shipped through TurkStream, the pipeline linking Russia with Southeast Europe.

“Natural gas entering the Union through borders or interconnection points between the Union and Russia or Belarus and through the interconnection point Strandzha 2 / Malkoclar (TurkStream) shall be presumed to be exported, directly or indirectly, from the Russian Federation, unless unambiguous evidence,” the Danish compromise proposal states.

The draft rules reflect fears that Russian supplies could still be blended with other gas and re-exported to Europe, a process that is difficult to track as fuel often changes hands before reaching end consumers. If adopted, the measures would also prevent future swap deals that could disguise Russian deliveries as non-Russian shipments.

Under the current phaseout plan, gas imported under short-term contracts of less than one year must stop by June 17, 2026, with exemptions for landlocked countries such as Hungary and Slovakia. Longer-term agreements will be prohibited entirely by the end of 2027.

Denmark hopes to secure backing from EU member states for the gas ban proposal by October. It would then enter negotiations with the European Parliament, with the goal of finalizing legislation before the end of the year.

Speculation of a possible Putin-Zelensky meeting arose in light of Trump’s talks with Putin in Alaska, after which the US leader claimed he had “begun the arrangements” for such a meeting, which might later expand into a three-way summit.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in China on Monday, Ushakov confirmed that Putin and Trump had discussed raising the level of the negotiating team for direct talks between Moscow and Kiev, but stressed that no decision has been finalized.

“What the press reports is not what we agreed on. They often talk about a trilateral meeting, about a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, but there was no agreement on this between Putin and Trump,” Ushakov said.

He added that while the US delegation promised specific proposals on such meetings after Alaska, none have yet been made. The issue, he noted, remains under discussion.

According to Ushakov, the Ukraine conflict was a key topic in Putin’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the SCO summit on Monday. He did not disclose details of those conversations.

Speaking earlier in the day, Putin said Moscow values the efforts of its strategic partners to end the hostilities, and promised to brief colleagues on his conversations with Trump during bilateral talks. The Russian leader stressed that any potential Ukraine peace deal would only hold if “the root causes of the crisis… [are] eliminated.” He reiterated that one of the main causes of the conflict was the West’s “attempts to drag Ukraine into NATO, which represent a direct threat to Russia’s security.”