Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal of direct talks with Ukraine last week and the composition of the delegation he subsequently announced was carefully calibrated so as not to be construed as an agreement to Ukraine’s recent proposal—supported by European leaders—for an immediate thirty-day ceasefire. Russian officials said Ukraine’s offer was nothing more than an ultimatum, and Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Russia would not do anything under pressure.
Indeed, Putin’s announcement was carefully packaged to avoid looking like Moscow was capitulating to pressure from Washington. Instead of a ceasefire with no obligations to enter into negotiations, Putin’s idea is for negotiations without a ceasefire. In other words, Russia is seeking a return to the negotiations that took place in Istanbul between the two sides in the months following the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
It's all very reminiscent of how Moscow agreed to de-escalation in the Black Sea at the end of March. Back then, it was also important for the Kremlin to underline that nothing extraordinary was underway—just a return to the Black Sea grain deal that collapsed in 2023. The Kremlin is spinning its current position in exactly the same fashion: nothing to see here, just a resumption of negotiations that, Russian officials allege, Kyiv broke off in 2022 on the orders of the West.
Inevitably, Putin’s proposal of negotiations without a ceasefire is also better aligned with Russia’s interests on the ground. Russian officials have endlessly repeated that a halt in the fighting would hand Ukraine a military advantage, with Kyiv using it to build defenses, move arms, and carry out further mobilization. Putin’s proposal hands the advantage to Russia: while Russian diplomats press their Ukrainian counterparts at the negotiating table, the Russian army can continue to advance on the battlefield.
While the White House is putting pressure on Ukraine to make concessions, it was apparently surprised by the number of Russian demands. U.S. President Donald Trump reacted ambiguously to Putin’s offer of direct negotiations: on the one hand, he urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree immediately and travel to Istanbul; on the other, he has not expressed any confidence in the success of the talks.
Zelensky responded immediately to Putin’s offer, stating that he would be in Istanbul on May 15 to negotiate personally with Putin. Seeking to get ahead of events (leaders normally only meet once their delegations have come to an agreement), he was trying to show that the Russian offer was not really about reaching a peace agreement, but about spinning out the war for as long as possible. Sure enough, while Zelensky traveled to Turkey, the Kremlin has said Putin will not be doing so any time soon.
When asked how long the talks might last, the Kremlin spokesman replied that everything would depend on how they proceed. Neither this answer nor the relatively junior composition of the Russian delegation suggests any irreversible movement toward a goal or any firm intention to produce a result.
A signal of such intent would have been a higher-level Russian delegation—not to mention a meeting between the countries’ leaders. Trump even offered himself as bait: he said he would be willing to go to Istanbul if Putin did.
The Russian delegation does not appear to have been selected with any sense of urgency. It consists of a controversial former culture minister, the head of the military intelligence agency, and a military officer and diplomat. This is the level of representatives used in standard talks to negotiate over technicalities—the details they are trained to handle—before they hand over to ministers for political validation, or for signing binding documents in preparation for a summit.
The head of the delegation is presidential aide and former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, a man with neither technical nor strategic credentials. He is a deeply ideological figure and often imprecise interpreter of history for the mass audience.
Medinsky also led the failed Istanbul talks back in 2022. Putin keeps repeating that the agreements reached in Istanbul were even initialed—but were then sabotaged by Kyiv on orders from the West. It seems he genuinely believes that Medinsky’s team had almost reached a deal, but external forces intervened, and now that the configuration of those forces has changed, it might be possible to build on that result.
In a sense, this dovetails with Putin’s own vision of the war in Ukraine not as a strategic conflict, but as a chance to rectify a historical mistake: the emergence of a separate, and in Moscow’s view, “incorrect” Ukraine. At the same time, the level and make-up of the delegation reveal that Moscow does not view what is happening as anything akin to a new Cuban Missile Crisis requiring urgent resolution. There is no rush or, seemingly, any fear of failure.
In fact, the most burning issues were not even discussed in Istanbul back in spring 2022. Questions of territory, the size of Ukraine’s armed forces, its legislation practices, troop deployments, and security guarantors were left for higher-level discussions that never took place.
This is why Trump, who wants results, is trying to push the sides toward talks at higher levels—ideally at the top. Putin’s attitude, meanwhile, is that Trump may be in a hurry, but he is not.
The Chinese leader Xi Jinping—both personally and through Brazil’s President Lula—is also nudging Putin toward action, though without applying the same kind of pressure as Trump.
Russia seems to see the negotiations as serving two purposes. First, they enable Moscow to repeat its conditions for halting its aggression, which still roughly correspond to the stated goals of the “special military operation” and prewar ultimatums—only updated to reflect the “situation on the ground” and the changes to Russia’s constitution (which now claims four more Ukrainian regions as Russian territory). All of this, as in 2022, remains unsolvable at this stage.
Second, the talks are a chance to lay down new terms for a ceasefire: that it coincide with a freeze on Ukrainian mobilization (but not, apparently, on Russian mobilization), and a halt to arms production and supplies (again, not necessarily on both sides). Monitoring mechanisms are also on the table.
If anything emerges from the talks, a modified version of the 2021 ultimatum shaped through the current exchanges could be passed up to the higher-level negotiators: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoys Keith Kellogg and Steve Witkoff on the U.S. side, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, and Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev on the Russian side. That tier might begin work in parallel—but notably without Ukrainian participation. And that, in fact, is Russia’s chief desire: to sit down with the Americans at a senior level and discuss global problems and “indivisible security” with Ukraine reduced to just one subplot—and ideally absent from the table altogether.
Indeed, Peskov confirmed this directly two days ago: “The process of a Ukrainian settlement and the process of restoring relations with the United States are proceeding independently.” That’s how Moscow sees it, and how it would like it to be.
At the final stage, Putin will meet with Trump to talk about “global issues,” one of which happens to be Ukraine. Zelensky could be invited to the Ukraine segment if absolutely necessary—but the rest is strictly a conversation between the U.S. and Russian leaders.
In other words, the process Russia is proposing appears to be three-stage and somewhat drawn-out, with Putin’s role reserved for the final stage, when his counterpart will be not Zelensky, but Trump—and the subject not just peace in Ukraine, but the full rehabilitation of Russia as a global player, despite its aggressive war. Moscow sees the current moment as a convenient time not to end the war, but to achieve its goals in spite of it.
