KYIV, Ukraine >> Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will be waiting for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the Turkish capital this week to conduct face-to-face talks about the more than 3-year war, amid heavy pressure from the U.S. and European leaders to reach a settlement.

Putin hasn’t yet said whether he will be at the talks, which U.S. President Donald Trump has urged the two sides to attend as part of Washington’s efforts to stop the fighting.

Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv that he will be in Ankara on Thursday to conduct the negotiations. He will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two will wait for Putin to arrive, he said.

Zelenskyy said he would “do everything to agree on a ceasefire, because it is with (Putin) that I must negotiate a ceasefire, as only he can decide on it.”

Zelenskyy said that if Putin chooses Istanbul to hold the meeting, then both leaders will travel there from Ankara.

“If Putin does not arrive and plays games, it is the final point that he does not want to end the war,” Zelenskyy said.

The Ukrainian leader added that if Putin doesn’t show up, European and U.S. leaders should follow through with threats of additional and heavy sanctions against Russia.

Trump, who is on a four-day Middle East trip, said Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would attend the talks. Special envoy Steve Witkoff also is set to take part, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview plans that have not been made public.

Washington has been applying strong pressure on both sides to come to the table since Trump took office in January with a promise to end the war.

Military analysts say that both sides are preparing a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Monday that Russia is “quickly replenishing front-line units with new recruits to maintain the battlefield initiative.”

International pressure has been growing to push Ukraine and Russia into finding a settlement.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pressed again for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire as he met his Greek counterpart in Berlin on Tuesday.

“We are waiting for Putin’s agreement,” he said.

“We agree that, in case there is no real progress this week, we then want to push at European level for a significant tightening of sanctions,” Merz added. He said that “we will focus on further areas, such as the energy sector and the financial market.”

Merz welcomed Zelenskyy’s readiness to travel personally to Turkey, “but now it is really up to Putin to accept this offer of negotiations and agree to a ceasefire. The ball is exclusively in Russia.”

Overnight, Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said. It was Russia’s smallest drone bombardment this year.

The Kremlin hasn’t directly responded to Zelenskyy’s challenge for Putin to meet him in person at the negotiating table.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined for the second straight day Tuesday to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else will represent Russia at the potential talks.