KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The Istanbul 2.0 talks between Russia and Ukraine collapsed on 16 May 2025, confirming expectations that peace is not imminent.
- Russia only agreed to technical-level talks, insisting on addressing “root causes” and final settlement terms—not temporary ceasefires.
- Ukraine and European allies prioritised a 30-day ceasefire before broader negotiations, which Russia sees as a stalling tactic for Western rearmament.
- Zelenskyy’s call for a direct leader-to-leader meeting contradicted standard diplomatic practice and was perceived as performative. The lack of pre-negotiation alignment and preparation rendered the talks unproductive and largely symbolic.
- Western leverage, such as sanctions threats, has lost credibility, and military support is increasingly rhetorical.
- Russia, enjoying battlefield superiority, sees no incentive to freeze the conflict, preferring continued pressure over concessions.
- Kyiv’s diplomatic posture appears aimed more at global public opinion than at realistic negotiation outcomes.
- The U.S. has acknowledged the war as a proxy conflict, complicating Ukraine’s role as an exclusive and genuine negotiating agent.
- Türkiye used the occasion to reinforce its role as a key diplomatic broker, despite limited substantive outcomes.
- Without real alignment or direct U.S.–Russia talks, the war will likely continue, with future peace terms growing harsher for Ukraine.
Istanbul 2.0: A pre-meditated choreography of failure—the long-anticipated negotiations between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, held once again in Istanbul on Friday 16 May (although initially scheduled for Thursday 15 May), have now effectively collapsed, as many expected they indeed would. The diplomatic theatre that unfolded bore less resemblance to a serious attempt at peace than to a symbolic exercise. Meaning, the war shall continue.
From the outset, the omens were unpropitious. Beyond media snippets, the enduring impasse is to be described as follows:
- The Russian Federation declares itself open to “serious” negotiations for a peace agreement, provided these address “the root causes of the conflict” and acknowledge “the realities of the ground.” The Russians reject any discussion on a temporary ceasefire instead of actual peace negotiations for a final diplomatic settlement of the conflict, seeing a temporary ceasefire as pointless since they are winning on the ground, unpalatable to European ears as this reality is. They do not see themselves as having any incentive for a temporary ceasefire instead of a final diplomatic settlement—and they see the request for a 30-day ceasefire as a means for Europeans to re-arm Ukraine and to continue the war rather than to conclude it.
- The Ukrainian and European side (and, until quite recently, the American side as well) insist on a temporary ceasefire now, before any wider negotiations commence—which might or might not commence following this ceasefire. The European side claims to have leverage towards that end, an “or else” clause: the threat of the imposition of more sanctions on the Russian Federation.
Three points already stand out here. Firstly, that obviously there is no common as to what was/is to be discussed in negotiations; the different sides were/are not on the same page as to what we are to negotiate about. Secondly, that the track record of damage infliction on Russia via sanctions (i.e., minimal, if not inverse) during the last three, not to mention eleven, years has not proven educative as to whether this is indeed an effective European leverage. Thirdly, that the talk of sending European armies to Ukraine has subsided, if not muted altogether—since the “European coalition of the willing” could not bring itself to muster any meaningful numbers even at the rhetorical level, while Americans taking a rain check on this possibility has proven to be exceedingly stressful to the leadership of key European countries.
To this, the question of who is sending whom to Istanbul is to be factored in. From the outset, the Russian Federation said it is open to sending a “delegation” (meaning, by definition: not the president) to Istanbul in Türkiye. This would have been the first direct Russia–Ukraine negotiations after three years—and Russia indeed ended up sending more or less the same delegation it had sent to Istanbul in April 2022, when final peace terms had already been agreed between Ukraine and the Russian Federation (a summary may be found in the main provisions document), before Boris Johnson stormed in and the U.S. and the UK talked Ukraine out of signing the agreement. And it is irrefutably the case that serious peace negotiations, after three years of radio silence insofar as direct, bilateral talks are concerned, first require the tentative agreement of bilateral technical and political delegations, refining the blueprint many times over, and then, eventually ending up with formalising an essentially already agreed-upon plan at the level of heads of state. Heads of state do not meet to gossip or wrestle, but to formalise all-but-final agreements. As it happens, the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting charade in the White House was also due to deficient preparations by both sides: the two leaders did not convene in order to simply formalise what would have been carefully choreographed in advance, but were left to improvise in front of cameras—and, predictably, this ended in catastrophe. The first meeting should never be a summit-level meeting, if you want to stop a war that you are not winning.
While Russia, now in a position of tactical and strategic advantage on the battlefield, approached Istanbul with the expectation of structured discussions among technical and political delegations—focusing chiefly on what it calls the root causes of the war, mostly laid out in negotiating documents sent and published before the Ukraine war, in December 2021: one to the USA and one to NATO countries—Zelenskyy’s insistence on a direct leader-to-leader engagement, devoid of the customary preparatory groundwork, contravenes the basic architecture of serious diplomacy. Historically, substantive agreements are negotiated at lower levels, and summits merely ratify what has already been agreed—in carefully choreographed encounters with mostly ritualistic significance.
However, President Zelenskyy’s declaration that he would attend the Istanbul talks in person, expressing hope for a tête-à-tête with President Putin on Thursday 15 May and stating “I expect Putin to come to Türkiye as well. Personally. And I hope that this time, Putin won’t be looking for excuses as to why he ‘can’t’ make it.” Indeed, Zelenskyy’s dramatic rhetoric—essentially a challenge to Putin along the lines of I’ll be there Thursday for a showdown between adults, will he show up or flee, you coward?—transformed what should have been a sober diplomatic exercise into something more akin to a televised duel. This performative posture does not bode well for prospects of peace. A head-of-state meeting in the absence of a prior agreement is devoid of practical content and almost certainly a non-starter, something which the Kremlin, with its disciplined diplomatic culture and while having the upper hand in the war, surely understood. Later, President Zelenskyy termed the Russian delegation “theatrical” in nature—yet this was more or less the very same delegation Ukraine had all but agreed with in April 2022, after comprehensive negotiations.
There are two problems here. The first is the obvious and already explained one: a partially televised El Paso gunfight duel between leaders, without any pre-existing peace settlement to merely formalise, is the very opposite of serious negotiations to stop an immense war of seven-digit casualties in the European continent. The second problem is a strategic one for the Ukrainian side: what is the intended audience for this blame game—that if the Russian president does not personally come in order to discuss a temporary ceasefire he is not interested in, instead of a final peace settlement he claims to be interested in, then this shows that the Russians have no appetite for peace negotiations? Is it the European and American citizenry—at a time when, at the state level, the US has clarified and the EU is close to clarifying that none of their military will come to the rescue, while Ukraine entering NATO is not on the table during this war? No amount of hypothetical popular pressure will change this fact; decision-makers deliberated, and their range of options has narrowed. Is the audience the international Twitter crowd and commentariat—which cannot change any of the realities of this war? What’s the strategy here?
All this underscored a fundamental disjunction: the talks were launched without a shared premise. Yet it also showcases a tragic reality: that even at this late point in 2025, there is a deficient realisation of the fact that this is an actual war (not a PR stunt, not a reality show) of immense casualties, in which one side is winning, the other side is losing, any peace settlement will entail excruciatingly painful terms for the losing side, and the more this peace settlement gets delayed, the more painful these terms will be, since there is no miraculous cavalry in sight, particularly in the post-Biden era. As the current American president famously and truthfully told the Ukrainian president, “You don’t have the cards,” however tragic and cynical as this reality might be.
Digging deeper
Let us unpack this further, adding more analytical layers to the above points.
Russia’s proposal to reconvene talks in Istanbul carried an unmistakable historical echo. It was here in March and April 2022 that the two sides came closest to a peace accord, mere weeks after the war’s commencement. Since that missed opportunity, Ukraine has suffered staggering human and territorial losses. The recurrence of Istanbul as a venue appears deliberately chosen by Russia to remind the world—and perhaps Ukraine itself—that the war might have ended then. That it did not, and that it now continues with diminished Western leadership and changed global alignments, casts a long shadow over Kyiv’s current negotiating position.
Ukraine, with support from its Western allies, has continued to call for an immediate ceasefire—a “pause now, discussions later” formula. Moscow, from a position of strength, rejects any suggestion of freezing the conflict under conditions that would effectively ratify the current frontlines. For Russia, this is not Korea circa 1953. Its assessment is that Ukraine, and especially its president, remain unwilling to engage on the basis of military realities on the ground—realities dictated, inevitably, by the dominant force in the field.
Thus, the two sides do not merely disagree on solutions; they fundamentally diverge on the very terms of engagement. One side envisions a truce as a starting point, the other sees it as a premature concession. Even U.S. President Donald Trump predicted that the negotiations would fail, framing them as symbolic rather than substantive—a moment in the historical record rather than a turning point.
These proceedings, then, are best understood not as a pathway to peace but as a diplomatic performance with multiple audiences. Kyiv, under pressure from both Washington and Brussels, cannot afford to appear intransigent, and thus showed up. Moscow, on the other hand, seeks to present itself not as a belligerent aggressor by default, but as a rational actor prepared to negotiate—particularly to the nations of the Global South and its BRICS partners. These countries, less beholden to the Western narrative, prefer a Russia that pursues diplomacy, however fruitlessly, over one that is cast as expansionist—while they are immensely more sympathetic to Russia’s version of a provoked conflict and long-term self-defence rather than the Western version of the unprovoked war of aggression.
The Western alliance, by contrast, is not Moscow’s intended audience. Instead, Russia’s diplomatic choreography serves to affirm, in the historical record, that it sought a negotiated exit. Should escalation follow, Moscow can claim that it did not spurn the table of diplomacy.
However, all evidence points to Russia’s ability to escalate and continue the war as it deems fit. Based on the most consistent sources, the Russian army in Ukraine in February 2022 likely started with an invasion force of 150,000 to 200,000 troops, drawn from a border build-up of up to 200,000. This aligns with reports from Euronews, Marca, and The New York Times, which balance Western and Ukrainian perspectives. By the end of 2022, with mobilization and reinforcements, the troop count in Ukraine likely grew to around 210,000 to 300,000. Yet in 2023, Bloomberg estimated Russia’s troop count at 420,000. In 2024, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence announced Russia’s troop count at 514,000. And in early 2025, this number rose to 600,000. The capacity to escalate is increasing, rather than the other way around.
The illusion of bilaterality, the European disconnect, and Erdoğan’s moment
Complicating matters further is the increasingly open acknowledgement—most recently by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—that this is a proxy war, one between the U.S./NATO and Russia, waged on Ukrainian soil and at the expense of Ukrainian lives. This admission renders any negotiation presented as a strictly bilateral Russian–Ukrainian affair inherently disingenuous. Russia has long maintained that the true issues lie with NATO, not merely with Kyiv—a position it had already made explicit in December 2021, through proposed (and rejected) security guarantees with the United States and the Alliance.
In this light, Ukraine’s role becomes that of a party expected to resolve a war for which it does not possess full agency. Negotiating the terms of peace without the actual adversaries at the table is structurally doomed. One moment, the U.S. telegraphs it is party to the conflict by framing it as a “proxy war;” the next moment, it calls for direct Russian–Ukrainian negotiations; and the day after, the American president declares that only him directly meeting Putin can solve this.
Against this backdrop, the recent visit by European leaders to Kyiv appeared more theatrical than strategic. The threats of further sanctions against Russia—after years of so-called “sanctions from hell”—sounded hollow. Military support, meanwhile, remains limited to rhetoric. Again, the proposed “coalition of the willing” revealed that, outside of France and Britain, few are indeed willing. Any formal deployment of Western troops would not qualify as a peacekeeping operation under international law, absent UN Security Council approval—an impossibility given Russia’s veto power.
In hosting these latest talks, President Erdoğan has once again succeeded in placing Türkiye at the heart of international diplomacy. The symbolism of Istanbul, with its echoes of 2022, enhances Ankara’s role as a pivotal, albeit opportunistic, intermediary. For a nation facing increasing scrutiny over its domestic politics, this diplomatic prominence offers a form of geopolitical absolution. After all, NATO’s General Secretary exclaims that “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an amazing leader within NATO and really respected by his colleagues.” Ekrem İmamoğlu, the jailed mayor of Istanbul and until recently the Western leadership’s medium-term hope for Türkiye, must be experiencing poignant solitude, and justifiably so.
In the wake of all this and Istanbul 2.0’s failure, the outlook for President Zelenskyy is not enviable—neither domestically, where fatigue grows, nor internationally, where patience thins.
Thus, the road ahead bifurcates starkly. Either the West and Russia will eventually negotiate over what Moscow insists are the war’s root causes—a dialogue presently deemed impossible. Otherwise, with Russia having the upper hand on the battlefield, the war will continue inexorably either toward the total victory of one side and the absolute defeat of the other, or toward an eventual peace settlement that would be considerably worse for Ukraine and Europe. Such a path will incur further human losses—pointless, avoidable, and tragic, as every life lost since the missed chance of Istanbul 2022 already has been.
* Sotiris Mitralexis holds a doctorate in political science and international relations; he works at University College London as a research fellow.