An article in the American Conservative by Jennifer Kavanaugh and Peter Slezkine makes it one of the few publications to break with the U.S. media in their position on the Ukraine war and the May 16 talks in Istanbul. The authors praised the success of the Istanbul meeting between Ukraine and Russia and urged U.S. President Donald Trump to continue his efforts to bring the two sides together. “Predictions to the contrary, Ukraine and Russia’s first direct talks in three years, held in Istanbul on May 16, went quite well. Most importantly, the two sides agreed to keep talking,” the authors write.
“Washington’s priority now should be to encourage continued talks between the combatants, even as fighting persists. This will require pushing back on Europe’s calls for more pressure on Putin and resisting the temptation to interfere before the two sides are ready to tackle issues that cannot be addressed without American involvement. After all, the most sustainable peace will be one agreed to by Ukraine and Russia together, not one coerced by the United States or Europe.”
They underlined the three major results of the meeting which had been underlined by Russia’s chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky: “to conduct the largest single POW exchange to date (1,000 personnel on each side); to produce a written version of their vision for peace for discussion at a future session; and to hold initial discussions about a meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”
