Istanbul
CNN
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After five days of confusion over Russian President Putin’s proposal for a Russian presidential meeting with Ukraine, the day they were supposed to start first brought about the same. A seven-hour stake in the bank of Boss Holas, an unruly scrum of the Russian Consulate, and ultimately a decision from this president may open a new chapter in this intractable dispute.
The chaotic scene unfolded in Istanbul on Thursday set the tone of a difficult road ahead. As the world’s media had descended in the morning at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Ukraine, they had not participated or given signals on the composition of the delegation, so sources from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN that there were “no meetings scheduled yet.”
Instead, Ukrainian President Voldimi Zelensky spoke with Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan of Ankara as the Kremlin confirmed with CNN that Putin would definitely not appear.
“Waiting is better than knowing the outcome,” joked Stanislav Ivshchenko, a correspondent with Channelzvezda of the Russian Ministry of Defense, who was waiting among the coffee-fueled crowds of journalists. “Everyone is tired of this,” he told CNN, referring to the war in Ukraine. “But we defend our position.”
The stubborn defense of Russia’s position is the main reason why the Russian president unexpectedly proposed these consultations five days ago. Faced with the ultimatum of Kiev and its allies to sign on to a 30-day ceasefire or face major new sanctions, Putin chose the third path.
“We are proposing to renew the negotiations with Kiev authorities and that they will cut off,” he told journalists early on Sunday. And to strengthen that point, he chose the same city that hosted some of those early peace negotiations, Istanbul, and he revealed Vladimir Medinsky, the same leading negotiator, who is the former Minister of Culture and Chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society, late Wednesday.
“The delegation is taking a constructive approach,” Medynsky said in a brief appearance at the Russian consulate on Thursday afternoon. The media scrum is so intense that consulate officials could overhear the journalists threaten to cancel the briefing if they were not settled.
Medinsky argued that in person meetings are “establishing long-term peace and eliminating the root causes of conflict.” For Russia, the use of the phrase “root cause” that operates the gamut all the way from Ukraine’s NATO ambitions to its sovereign state was a reminder of how far the deal was.
Still, to make things even more complicated, Russia and Ukraine are now balancing their relationship with Donald Trump with their own interests. The US president again hanged his prospects for attending the meeting on Thursday, saying “if something happens,” saying he will consider going on Friday. White House envoys Keith Kellogg and Steve Witkov are already scheduled to be in Istanbul on Friday.
And Zelensky’s refusal to hide Trump was a key part of his final decision to engage with Russia. He left the meeting with Erdogan late in the afternoon and said he would not only send a delegation to Istanbul, but also lead Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, a higher-ranking official than the Russian side, to “not respect President Trump.”
Russia is also closely watching Trump’s next move, raising hopes that a reset of relations has been promised. And Trump may have raised those hopes on Thursday, telling reporters when he arrived in Abu Dhabi, “Nothing will happen until Putin and I gather.”
Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who left the post in Geneva in 2022, said he believes that the meeting with Trump is a major victory for Putin, but that he doesn’t think he’s interested in meeting with Zelensky.
“The two great powers should sit together and discuss how inferior countries should live under umbrellas,” he told CNN in an interview with Switzerland. “That’s how he sees the world, so Zelensky doesn’t fit.”
