Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to “freeze” the Ukraine conflict and return to what he described as the "Istanbul Formula 2.0", where "significant results were achieved", but the Kremlin said that the proposal is “impossible” given Kiev’s position.
During a meeting with Putin on Saturday in the Russian city of Omsk, Tokayev said Kazakhstan was not an outsider to the ongoing conflict but would not seek to play a mediator role, expressing confidence that “a great country", Russia, would resolve issues on its own.
"Perhaps this conflict should be frozen, and we should return to the 'Istanbul Formula 2.0,' since significant results were achieved there," Tokayev said. "Then, naturally, under guarantees from the major powers, including Russia, we can move toward the long-awaited peace."
Tokayev said he had received numerous signals from Europe and the United States regarding the conflict, which he described as an interstate war.
He also praised what he called Putin's "maximum diplomatic flexibility" during the summit in Anchorage, Alaska, between the Russian president and US President Donald Trump in August last year.
"And all of this must be stopped, because what is happening, in my convinced opinion, is to the advantage and delight of the opponents of both Russia and the Ukrainian state," he added.
The Kremlin said that the Kazakh president's proposal to “freeze” the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war is "impossible".
“Freezing (the war) as such is not possible,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by Russian media outlets, including state news agency Tass.
Peskov was quoted as saying that Russia’s conditions for a halt to hostilities are clear and the war could end “by the end of the day” if Ukraine makes the “appropriate decisions", referring to Moscow’s demand for a Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbas region, as well as Kiev’s abandonment of plans to join NATO.
“For us there is one main condition: we must achieve our goals,” Peskov went on to say, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin provided Tokayev with a detailed update on the progress of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Tokayev did not clarify his remarks concerning the "Istanbul formula", but the Turkish metropolis has hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, first in the initial weeks of the ongoing war, which produced a framework for a possible deal.
In mid-2025, three rounds of renewed peace talks were also held in Istanbul on May 16, June 2, and July 23, which produced major prisoner swaps and draft memorandums outlining positions of both sides for a potential peace deal.
