Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskykept a low-level Russian delegation waiting in Istanbul on Thursday while he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoǧan in Ankara.
Why is Zelensky in Turkey at all? It was in fact Vladimir Putin who proposed peace talks there in response to a recent European call for a 30-day ceasefire, but the Russian president is not attending personally. Putin’s decision to send junior officials is seen as an indication that he is not really interested in ending his invasion of Ukraine.
European leaders have warned that if Putin does not agree to stop the invasion, they will intensify sanctions on Russia and increase military aid to Ukraine.
But Donald Trump, who also called for peace talks in a social media post, seemed to reduce the pressure on Putin when he told reporters in Qatar that he was not expecting much from the meeting.
“Look, nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he said.
And while there was some speculation that Trump and Putin could yet show up in Turkey on Friday — a development that would substantially increase chances of a breakthrough — there was no sign of that by Thursday afternoon.
If that holds, the negotiations are unlikely to yield much of substance, and the basic deadlock will remain: Putin, keen to play for time while his army slowly advances, is demanding impossible conditions from Zelensky, while Trump, who pledged a swift end to the war, has grown increasingly frustrated with Putin but so far seems unwilling to apply more pressure on him.