It is the day of the meeting in Istanbul between Moscow and Kiev. The Russian and Ukraine delegations should sit at the table for what could be their first direct meeting on the conflict in Ukraine since March 2022. At the meeting they will not participate or the Russian president Vladimir Putin nor the Ukrainian one, Volodymyr Zelensky. And the absence of the leaders does not let a light of hope on the fact that the appointment in Türkiye can lead to steps forward towards the end of the conflict. The same secretary of the American state Marco Rubio He dampened the enthusiasm around the peace talks: “I want to be sincere … we don’t have great expectations on what will happen tomorrow,” said Rubio.
Words that echo those of the American president, Donald Trump: “I don’t think anything will happen, whether you like it or not, until he will not meet,” Trump explained to journalists on the Air Force One. The same mood of the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who said he did not expect a turning point, accusing Moscow of “not being serious” about the end of the war. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed direct negotiations between the two sides, but refused to respond when Zelensky challenged him to participate in person in the talks. The Russian delegation is guided thus by Vladimir Medinsky, a Putin councilor with an aggressive character who questioned Ukraine’s right to exist and led the interviews in 2022, at the beginning of the war. The Ukrainian delegation will be led by the Minister of Defense Rustm UMEROVtogether with a dozen vice-functionaries. A source of the Turkish Foreign Ministry stated that the interviews will take place in different ways. “The trilateral interviews between Russia, Ukraine and Türkiye are on the agenda” and there will also be interviews between US officials, Ukrainians and Turks, said the source. In a television briefing for the Russian media in Istanbul, Medinsky said that on Friday morning, “more precisely starting from 10.00, the Ukrainian part that will have to present himself at the meeting is expected”.
Meanwhile, the leaders of Russia and Ukraine have not failed to exchange insults at a distance: Yesterday Zelensky said that Russia sent a “farce” delegation, while the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova defined the Ukrainian president a “clown” and a “loser”. Outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Medinsky also confided to journalists that Russia sees the interviews as a continuation of those failed in 2022. In any case, he added, “the delegation undertakes to follow a constructive approach, to find possible solutions and points of contact. The goal of direct negotiations with the Ukrainian part is to establish lasting peace, eliminating the deep causes of the conflict, “said Medinsky.
Yesterday Zelensky met the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan In Ankara expressing the hope that the talks with Russia will already start in the evening. After the meeting, the Ukrainian leader said that Russia “is not taking real negotiations very seriously” and added that he has sent a high -level delegation “out of respect” against Erdogan and Trump. Faced with what already appears a stall, the residual hopes of reopening the dialogue between the parties on the field are placed in the mediation of the White House. Rubio said he will meet the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga in Istanbul and that an U.S. lower level American official will meet the Russian delegation.
Net, however, the judgment of the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer In tribute to Putin the responsibility of the non -agreement: Putin “he has to pay the price for refusing peace,” said Starmer on the sidelines of the meeting of the European political community in Albania. The CPE, which brings together the members of the European Union and 20 other countries, was established in 2022 on the initiative of the French President Emmanuel Macron in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Starmer and Macron will be joined by the German Chancellor Friedrich Merzfrom the head of NATO Mark Rutte and from Ursula von der leyenPresident of the European Commission. Kiev and his European allies had asked Russia to accept a cessation of 30 days before any negotiation, but Moscow rejected the proposal. Russia wants Ukraine to make massive territorial concessions, renouncing an even wider territory than that lost on the battlefield, and has also asked for the removal of Zelensky, promises of military neutrality and limitations to the Ukrainian army. Kiev and the West reject these requests, but Zelensky has admitted that Ukraine could recover part of the territory only by diplomatic.