Istanbul hosted the first direct round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations since March 2022 on 15 May in a meeting that followed the diplomatic lull since US President Donald Trump’s efforts to cajole the two sides into negotiating a peace agreement in February.
However, the meeting failed to achieve any progress, prompting Trump to phone his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to discuss ways to end the war in Ukraine. According to various assessments, his direct intervention may help to produce a breakthrough, especially in the light of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s subsequent remarks.
Describing his conversation with Trump as “informative, frank and very useful,” Putin said that “we have agreed with the President of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace treaty defining a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible conclusion of a peace agreement, and so on, including a possible ceasefire for a certain time, if the relevant agreements have been reached.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly expressed his country's readiness to return to the negotiating table in Istanbul and engage in direct talks with his Russian counterpart.
The choice of Istanbul as the venue for the negotiations was a logical one, notably because Turkey enjoys the trust of all sides, including the Western powers, as a neutral mediator.
Since the outbreak of the war in February 2022, Ankara has maintained a balanced approach between Moscow and Kyiv. While denouncing the Russian invasion, refusing to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Donbas, and providing significant military support to Kyiv, Ankara has refused to join the Western sanctions on Russia, continuing its trade with Moscow and work on joint energy projects.
This has enabled it to keep constructive lines of communication open with both sides, and its importance was demonstrated in the crucial role Turkey played in brokering the Black Sea Grain Export Deal in July 2022.
However, Turkey had already established its credentials as an impartial broker before this happened, and it had earlier hosted the direct talks in March and April 2022 that culminated in a nearly finalised draft peace agreement between the two sides.
Unfortunately, as has since been confirmed by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, Ukraine’s lead negotiator David Arakhamia, and Turkish mediators, Zelenskyy walked away from the deal under Western pressure spearheaded by former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Kyiv in April 2022.
Unlike the US and European countries, which have pushed for hard-power solutions and refused to seriously address the root causes of the crisis, Turkey has consistently advocated a diplomatic approach and the need to foster dialogue between the belligerents. And it has therefore repeatedly offered to serve as a platform for bridging differences over contentious issues and building mutual trust backed by guarantees in order to end the war in Ukraine.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reaffirmed his country’s commitment to this approach ahead of the recent Istanbul talks. Following a phone call with Putin on 11 May, Erdoğan said he welcomed Putin’s statement that Russia was ready to resume talks in Istanbul from where they had been interrupted in 2022.
Describing this as a window of opportunity, Erdoğan said that Turkey was ready to “provide all possible assistance in organising and conducting negotiations aimed at reaching a sustainable peace."
The 15 May negotiations were held amid a rapidly changing regional and international landscape. In addition to mounting pressures within both Ukraine and Russia to end the war, there has been a noticeable shift in Western thinking, with some European countries aligned with the Trump Administration’s desire to promote a settlement.
It is also noteworthy that the talks came soon after Washington’s decision in March to suspend military aid to Kyiv, which was followed by US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s announcement of a halt in US intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.
This had furnished Ukraine with precise information on Russian troop movements and air defences, lending it a tactical edge on the battlefield. Without it, Ukrainian forces have become more vulnerable to Russian attacks, resulting in even higher rates of human and material losses. The suspension of intelligence also included GPS coordinates and flight trajectories that Ukraine had been using to strike targets inside Russia using Western-made missiles.
Despite Turkish efforts, the Istanbul negotiations produced few results, including signs of possible progress in the future. Instead, the talks, which lasted less than two hours, quickly exposed the gulf between the two sides. A Ukrainian source familiar with the talks said that Moscow had insisted that Kyiv pull its forces out of Ukrainian regions now claimed by Russia as a prerequisite to a ceasefire, describing the Russian conditions as “unconstructive and impossible.”
Trump had offered to travel to Turkey if Putin attended the talks, reflecting his determination to end a war “that should never have happened,” as he wrote on his Truth Social social-media site. Putin sent a delegation to Istanbul, instead of attending the talks in person.
On the eve of the talks, Russia announced that it had taken another village in eastern Ukraine. Some commentators held that this undermined the credibility of Russia’s intentions, although there was no de-escalation or stated intention by either side to ease off the fighting ahead of the talks.
The negotiations did yield an agreement on a prisoner-of-war exchange involving 1,000 POWs on each side. No details have been released regarding the timing or mechanism for this process. Erdogan said that his country was resolved to continue its mediation role, but there was no sign of any intention from either side to pursue the talks further.
The lack of a horizon for further diplomacy has raised concerns that the Ukraine crisis might slide into a new and heightened phase of attrition. As previous episodes of the fighting have shown, this could lead to further unpredictable escalations. Moscow might step up its targeting of Ukrainian military capacities and infrastructure, for example, whether of arms manufacturing facilities in Ukraine or Western-supplied tanks and missile batteries.
Meanwhile, the European powers may notch up the pressure on the Trump Administration to reconsider its approach to the Ukraine crisis, urging it to increase the sanctions against Russia and deepen Putin’s international isolation.
At the same time, they might also take advantage of the failure of the Istanbul talks to calm the tensions that have arisen between Europe and Washington since Trump took office. They recognise the importance of sustained dialogue with the US for transatlantic stability and will try to narrow the gap between them and Trump over how to manage the Ukraine crisis.
That said, the meagre results of the Istanbul talks do not mean that there is no hope for a renewed push for peace. Trump, who remains committed to this end, will probably continue to try to break the deadlock. At the very least, he wants to create an environment conducive to the implementation of the US-Ukrainian agreements on mineral resource extraction.
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