The Russian delegation to the Istanbul 2.0 Negotiations with Ukraine met yesterday in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, before leaving for Istanbul. The President’s website reported that the team received briefings from such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, from the heads of intelligence and security, and notably from Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, and the military commanders in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson. Belousov and Gerasimov reported on the specific situations on the line of contact. “The meeting participants conducted a detailed joint discussion of all reports. Based on these briefings, the President summed up the meeting results, set tasks and charted the negotiating position of the Russian delegation in Istanbul.”
In his announcement of the talks on May 11, Putin had stated that Russia is set on “serious negotiations” with Ukraine and is seeking a “long-term, sustainable peace” that would address the root causes of the conflict. He also suggested that the negotiations could yield “a new ceasefire” that could pave the way for a comprehensive peace settlement, depending on the decisions of “the Ukrainian authorities and their supervisors.”
Today in Istanbul, Russia’s leader of the delegation Vladimir Medinsky announced that his delegation is ready to discuss “possible compromises,” yet the goal of the direct talks was “to sooner or later establish long-term peace” and “eliminate the basic root causes of the conflict.” Speaking outside the Russian consulate in Istanbul, Medinsky explained that Putin had held a “special meeting to prepare” the Russian delegation. He added that Putin “set the tasks and defined our negotiating position…. We consider these negotiations as a continuation of the peace process in Istanbul, which, unfortunately, was interrupted by the Ukrainian side three years ago.” He added that his delegation has all the “necessary competencies and powers to conduct negotiations.”
Of no little note, Medinsky was the leader of the successful negotiations at Istanbul in 2022. He reminded the reporters that it was Kiev that signed the draft agreement and then walked away from it. After that, the four Russian-speaking of Ukraine’s oblasts voted to join Russia. The spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova has summed up this, along with the previous loss of Crimea after the 2014 coup in Kiev, by noting that Ukraine’s territory shrinks every time Kiev disrupts the negotiation process.
