The delegations of the Russian Federation and Ukraine met in Istanbul. At the time of signing the number, the outcome of the meeting is unknown. Only one outcome is known: it will not be final. The Russian side has long stated that they expect a long negotiation process with an agreement on the establishment of lasting peace, and not a short truce, which is expected by the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky. The Russian Federation has not retreated from this point of view. Even Donald Trump has shown uncharacteristic pessimism about the imminent prospects of a cease-fire. Nevertheless, the United States is not going to withdraw its role as an intermediary between Russia and Ukraine, despite the threats previously expressed by the White House.
It was unclear for a long time whether the negotiations would take place, even on Thursday. Zelensky has outlined his position in advance: he will negotiate only personally with Vladimir Putin. If the Russian president does not arrive in Istanbul, then the negotiations themselves will not take place. In this case, Zelensky will limit his visit to Turkey to a conversation in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Ukrainian officials will attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Antalya. Therefore, when a list of members of the Russian delegation appeared on the Kremlin’s website on Wednesday evening, there was no shortage of those who predicted the talks would fail. The negotiators were led by Vladimir Medinsky, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation. The delegation itself included Igor Kostyukov, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Alexander Fomin, Deputy Defense Minister, and Mikhail Galuzin, Deputy Foreign Minister. Fomin and Medinsky participated in the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in 2022. Consequently, the composition of the delegation corresponded to Putin’s words. In his address, he said that the current negotiations in Istanbul should be a continuation of the negotiations in 2022. The Ukrainian side definitely saw the current meeting differently. Before Thursday, and on Thursday, both Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials emphasized that the negotiations should pursue one specific goal: a cease-fire. According to them, they were going to talk only about the truce for 30 days, and not about the causes of the conflict or any other topics that the Russian Federation would propose.
Journalists who besieged Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace in the morning, where the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian delegations was to take place, had to settle for contradictory statements made by different officials for a long time. The Russian Federation initially announced the exact time of the talks (10 a.m.), then announced their postponement to the afternoon. The Turkish Foreign Ministry and Zelensky’s team generally claimed that negotiations had not yet been scheduled. The specifics appeared only after a three-hour conversation between the presidents of Ukraine and Turkey. At a press conference after it, Zelensky confirmed that he would still send a Ukrainian delegation to Istanbul, but he would not be in it. He named the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Rustem Umerov as its head. At the press conference, Zelensky not only did not hide, but also tried to emphasize that he did not expect to achieve a result satisfactory to Kiev in these negotiations. He will consider success if the Russian Federation, in his words, “at least tries to demonstrate” its readiness to end the conflict. It was Zelensky who first said that negotiations could take place not only on May 15, but also the next day, but definitely without the participation of the Ukrainian president. He is scheduled to hold talks in Albania on May 16.
Almost in parallel with the Ukrainian president’s press conference, Medinsky spoke with journalists at the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Istanbul. He dismissed the claims to the composition of the delegation, saying that representatives of all interested departments were present in it. Medinsky also called the task of direct negotiations with Ukraine: “sooner or later to achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict.” In other words, if Zelensky has retreated from his strict demands for dialogue with the Russian Federation, then the Russian delegation has remained in the same position, the one that Putin voiced in his address.
The continuation of negotiations on May 16 suggests that new participants may join them. Donald Trump, who was in Qatar on Thursday, admitted that he might come to Istanbul that day. “I’m thinking about going, but it’s very difficult due to our busy schedule today and tomorrow. But if something happens, I would go on Friday, if necessary,” he said. At the same time, Trump, whose administration insisted on direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, suddenly declared that “nothing will happen until Putin and I meet.”
Neither he nor the people of his team repeat their threats to withdraw from the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue.
Judging by Thursday’s events, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will now be on the American side, at least temporarily, not the special representative of the US President, Steve Witkoff, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio. On Tuesday, it was reported that both of them will arrive in Istanbul. However, on Thursday, at the time of signing the issue, only Rubio commented on the negotiations and held meetings related to them (in particular, with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga). He stressed that the United States “wants to see progress” in the negotiation process in the coming days. On the eve of his arrival in Turkey, Zelensky found it necessary to gently criticize Witkoff. He said that he was in contact with the Ukrainian president. Zelensky also mentioned that he had not spoken to him either personally or by phone. “It seems to me that something did not work out with Witkoff,” the Ukrainian president said. Earlier, Zelensky directly accused this Trump special representative of “broadcasting Kremlin narratives.” Anyway, Trump himself did not express dissatisfaction with Witkoff and did not deny media reports that he and Rubio would be in Istanbul on May 16.
The Western media also commented on Putin’s meeting before the talks in Turkey. In addition to the participants of the negotiating group and members of the government, according to Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, “all the commanders of the groups in the special military operation zone took part in it.” There are various conclusions drawn from this fact, including the fact that a cease–fire, no matter what, is possible, and in the near future.
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The attempts of dialogue between Russia, Ukraine and the United States were monitored by the authors of Russian Telegram channels.
“The United States offers Russia to resume security negotiations within the framework of the Russia-NATO Council,” Bloomberg writes. This is one of the points of the package agreement. The specified Council ceased its work in 2022. And since 2014, he has been working in a stripped-down form,” recalls Temnik.
“The United States, calling for the resumption of the work of the Russia-NATO Council, is, of course, well-intentioned, but it makes little sense. The work of this organization makes no sense until NATO abandons attempts to inflict military defeat on Russia by supporting its opponent in a large-scale war, and returns to normal dialogue from neutral positions,” writes the Meister.
“Special and special attention is paid to the agency represented in Istanbul at the level of the deputy head as an expert of the delegation: the Presidential Office for State Policy in the humanitarian sphere. It feels like the agenda of this department is not only prisoners of war and abducted civilians, but also many other topics of humanitarian and related efforts,” notes Adequate.