The Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul on Friday in their first direct peace conversations in more than three years, under the pressure of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to end the most fatal conflict in Europe since World War two.
Live television showed Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, addressing Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the luxurious Dolmabahce palace in the Bosphorus. Half of the Ukrainian delegation carried military camouflage fatigors, sitting at a table directly in front of their Russian counterparts, which were on suits.
Fidan said it was critical to achieve fire as soon as possible. He said he was happy to see the will of both parties to open a new window of opportunity for peace, and it was important that Istanbul’s conversations form the basis for a meeting between the leaders of the two countries.
“There are two paths ahead: one path will lead us to a process that will lead to peace, while the other will lead to greater destruction and death. The sides will decide on their own, with their own will, what way they choose,” said Fidan.
The sides at war had not found face to face since March 2022, the month after the invasion of Russia.
The expectations for a great advance, already low, were abolished even more on Thursday when Trump, ending a tour of the Middle East, said there would be no movement without a meeting between him and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
The head of the Delegation of Ukraine, which establishes the priorities of kyiv, said that peace was only possible if Russia agreed to a high fire of 30 days, the return of the kidnapped Ukrainian children and an exchange of all prisoners of war.
Russia says he wants to end war by diplomatic means and is ready to discuss a high fire. But he has raised a list of questions and concerns, saying that Ukraine could use a pause to rest his strength, mobilize additional troops and acquire more western weapons.
Ukraine and his allies accuse Putin of stagnating and say that the desire of peace is not taken seriously.
Putin remains away
It was Putin who proposed the direct conversations in Turkiye, but rejected a challenge of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet him there in person, instead of sending a team of middle -level officials. Ukraine responded by appointing negotiators of similar range.
The Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, and the envoy of Trump Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, were also in Istanbul, where a burst of separate diplomatic contacts took place today.
Rubio told journalists on Thursday night that, according to the level of negotiation teams, a great advance was unlikely. “I hope to be wrong. I hope to be 100 percent wrong. I hope that tomorrow the news says they have accepted a stop the fire; they have agreed to celebrate serious negotiations. But I am only giving you my evaluation, honestly,” he said.
Russia said today that he had captured another village in his slow and exhausting progress in eastern Ukraine. Minutes before the start of the Istanbul meeting, the Ukrainian media reported an air alert and explosions in the city of Dnipro.
Russia says that he sees conversations as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the first weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul. But the terms under discussion then, when Ukraine was still staggering from Russia’s initial invasion, they would be deeply disadvantaged for kyiv. They included a demand from Moscow for large cuts to the size of the Ukraine army.
Zelenskiy personnel, Andriy Yermak, said the Russian attempts to align current conversations with the previous failed negotiations would fail.
With the Russian forces now in control of about a fifth of Ukraine, Putin has quickly maintained his long demands so that kyiv gives territory, abandons his ambitions of NATO membership and becomes a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects these terms as equivalent to capitulation and seeks guarantees of their future security of world powers, especially the United States.
Mutual hostility
Ukraine repelled the initial assault of Russia to the capital kyiv in 2022 and recaptured strips of land seized by the Russians in the first year of the war. But since then, Russian forces have advanced slowly but relentlessly during most of the last two years.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been injured or killed on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, the entire cities have been destroyed and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee from their homes.
Moscow says that he was forced to mount his “special military operation” in response to the expansion of NATO and the perspective that the Western alliance would admit Ukraine as a member and use it as a launching launch to attack Russia. Any settlement of the conflict must address these “root causes,” says the Kremlin. kyiv and his allies reject that as a false pretext for what they call a hoarding of imperial style lands.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, head of the Ukraine Army, said Thursday night that Russia has around 640,000 troops in Ukraine at this time and “turned his aggression against Ukraine into a war of wear.” He said there was an active fight along the entire frontline line, stretching many hundred miles.
