The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will not sit tomorrow in front of his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenski, in Istanbul. Three years after their last bilateral encounter, Russia and Ukraine will try to be face to face this Thursday to probe if you can open peace negotiations. The Russian representation will be made up of a second -line team, the same one that was in charge of the failed conversations of 2022, headed by the president of the Union of Writers of Russia, Vladimir Medianski, according to the list made public by the Kremlin. Until last minute on Wednesday I had not been clear who would be part of the delegation and Putin had not responded to Zelenski’s challenge, which challenged him to meet in person in Türkiye.
The third country’s delegation in discord, United States, will arrive on Friday. Its president, Donald Trump, will not fly to Türkiye, as confirmed to the Reuters agency late on Wednesday a spokesman. The Republican, who is touring several countries of the Middle East, had assured that if the face -to -face match between Putin and Zelenski, he would also sit at the negotiation table in Istanbul at a last stop before returning to Washington. After knowing the list of Kremlin attendees, his administration has discarded the idea.
The meeting in Turkey was improvised after the outburst of Vladimir Putin last Saturday, who at untimely hours responded to the western demands of a truce with a counterofferte: an Istanbul meeting with kyiv this May 15 “without previous conditions”. His great rival, Ukraine Volodimir Zelenski, accepted the initiative and challenged him to see himself personally, but the Russian leader had not answered in the four days that have passed since then.
Finally Putin will not go to this Thursday’s call. Neither does its Foreign Minister Serguéi Lavrov. His delegation will be led by a figure of little political weight even in Russia, Vladimir Medinski. His only work after the failure of 2022 has been to rewrite the story in the textbooks of the schools to justify the current invasion of Ukraine.
The rest of the Russian team is the same as in 2022, including the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Galuzin and the Deputy Minister of Defense Alexánder MIF. The Kremlin idea is to resume those failed negotiations at the same point.
Zelenski made it clear that he would not meet anyone from the Russian delegation other than President Putin. Until the last moment, all the options have been on the table and, in fact, Ukrainian diplomatic sources explained to this newspaper that part of the Ukraine Embassy staff in the Turkish capital, Ankara, had already displaced on Monday to Istanbul to prepare a possible visit of its president. He has assured on Wednesday afternoon that his country is willing to participate in “any negotiation format.”
Not only has he pressed to the Russian leader, but also his partners of what he calls The multipolar world. The Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, landed on Wednesday in the Russian capital with a message for the Kremlin. “When I arrive in Moscow, I will try to talk to Putin. I don’t have a hard time saying: ‘Hey, Comrade Putin, sees Istanbul to talk, damn it!”, The Brazilian said before leaving from Beijing home via Russia. Finally, Lula has not met in Moscow with Putin.
What is clear is that Zelenski will travel to Turkey, although he will do it to Ankara, where he will meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will not move to Istanbul either unless Putin and the US president, Donald Trump, who had also offered to go in case the negotiations were at the highest level.
Who will host for Russian and Ukraine delegations is another unknown, since the head of Turkish diplomacy, Hakan Fidan, has planned assistance this Thursday to the informal meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers that began Wednesday in Antalya, in the south of Turkey. You may have to leave the meeting of the Atlantic Alliance halfway if conversations progress in Istanbul.
In this city of the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, but Tuesday, entrusted to travel to Istanbul was also expected, to head the American negotiating team, among whom is also the envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. Both will travel to the city of Bosphorus on Friday, May 16. According to the American press, in the delegation, the special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg would also be, although it has not been officially confirmed.
Restart of 2022 conversations
Putin urged this Saturday to restart the failed conversations of Istanbul from March 2022. At that time, the Russian offensive on the two largest cities in the country, kyiv and Járkov, had failed thanks to the Ukraine resistance, and kyiv and the whole world discovered in the Russian withdrawal their massacre of civilians, such as Bucha Hands tied.
According to the story of the Russian leader, Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations, pressured by the West. And Moscow’s troops had been “repaired,” Putin said, as “gesture of goodwill.” But reality was far from this version. The Russian columns ran the risk of suffering a total and Ukraine debacle, which until then had received a marginal military aid of the West, released a large part of its occupied territory in the following months. In addition to the direct threat on its capital, kyiv, the Ukrainian army reconquered part of Jersón and Zaporiyia, provinces that Putin annexed on the role of its constitution in September 2022 and that still claims.
In these three years, Putin has also justified not to meet with Zelenski for considering him an “illegitimate president” for not holding elections in full invasion of his country, a situation that contemplates the Ukraine Constitution. Paradoxically, this Wednesday, the Kremlin justice sentenced Grigori Melkonants, co -president of Golos to five years in prison, an organization that has evidenced electoral fraud in Russia for decades.
Turkey, despite being a member of the Alliance since 1952, has not imposed sanctions on Russia (although it meets part of them so as not to be affected by secondary sanctions) and has maintained open channels with Putin, with whom Erdogan has good harmony. In the same way it has it with Zelenski. Ankara has supplied weapons to Ukraine, in addition to contributing to the export of his grain to the rest of the world.
Diplomatic balances
Thanks to these diplomatic balances, Turkey has hosted two rounds of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, both in March 2022: one in Antalya, among the Foreign Ministers of both countries and which ended with hardly any progress, and another in Istanbul, where Ukraine offered his resignation to be a member of NATO in exchange for security guarantees, but an agreement was not closed. kyiv and Moscow held the contacts a few more weeks, but only by videoconference.
The newspaper The New York Times He published in 2024 some documents of those conversations, drafts prepared by the negotiating delegations for a possible pact that in no case came to crystallize.
According to this version, in April 2022, both parties agree to exclude the future of Crimea from the possible peace agreement. Ukraine would not recognize its annexation and this issue would be addressed in the future. In addition, kyiv offered Kremlin to never join NATO and accept the occupation of their territories, although not the recognition of Russian sovereignty about them. Everything would look later.
However, according to the documents leaked by the American newspaper, Moscow and kyiv continued to disagree with the military capacity that Ukraine would maintain after the war, the conditions of their adhesion to the European Union and the laws on the Russian culture and language in the invaded country.
NATO, Ukraine and Russia, united by Türkiye
Representatives from 32 countries gathered in Antalya with the aim of preparing the leaders of leaders of Member States of the Atlantic Alliance, which will take place at the end of June in The Hague and advance in the debates about the increase in spending. The new US administration presses so that European countries increase their defense expenditure and assume more budget weight within the alliance.
Last Friday, the First Minister of Netherlands, Dick Schoof, explained that NATO general secretary Mark Rutte has asked the Member States to agree on a progressive increase in defense spending until 5% of GDP in 2032. Of this amount, ask that 3.5% be in military spending Other games. This represents a significant increase with respect to the current 2% spending objective, which many members do not even reach (in 2024 Spain dedicated 1.24% of its GDP, although it has promised to increase it to 2% this year).
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