(BSS/AFP) - Turkey`s foreign minister was on Thursday meeting with the Russian delegation that is in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years, a ministry source said.

"The meeting between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and the Russian side, headed by Vladimir Medinsky has started," the source said of talks taking place at Istanbul`s Dolmabahce Palace.

The talks had been announced earlier in the evening by a foreign ministry spokesman.

Russia and Ukraine had been expected to meet on Thursday in Istanbul for their first direct peace talks in more than three years at the Dolmabahce Palace on the banks of the Bosphorus.

But as the day wore on without any concrete indications of timings, it remained unclear whether the delegations would meet later in the evening or leave it until Friday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in southern Turkish city of Antalya for a NATO summit Thursday, was due in Istanbul on Friday.

He told reporters he would meet Ukraine`s top diplomat, Andriy Sybiga there, while a lower-level US official would meet with the Russian delegation.

The minister was not thought to be part of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks.

Rubio also expressed hope that Turkey would work to bring the two delegations together.

Earlier on Thursday, Fidan and Rubio held talks on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, with the pair agreeing that "efforts would continue to be made to ensure direct negotiations between the parties", a source at the Turkish foreign ministry said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Ankara earlier on Thursday, has sent a pared-down team to the Istanbul talks after Russia showed up with a relatively low-level delegation.

The Ukrainian delegation is headed by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, while the Russian side is being led by Medinsky, a hawkish advisor to Russia`s Vladimir Putin who has questioned Ukraine`s right to exist and led failed talks in 2022 at the start of the war.