Another round of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place in Istanbul on July 23. This was the third meeting between the two sides since face-to-face meetings resumed in May.The previous two rounds yielded very few concrete results, apart from agreements on prisoner exchanges and the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in action. They did, however, demonstrate two things. First, both sides remain very far apart on what they would consider acceptable terms for a ceasefire, let alone a peace agreement. And, second, neither side is prepared to walk away from the negotiations, fearing to incur the wrath of Donald Trump, the US president.Consequently, expectations for the third round were very low, and the negotiators did not disappoint in delivering almost nothing after their shortest meeting yet, which lasted just forty minutes. They agreed on another exchange of prisoners and on setting up three working groups on political, military, and humanitarian issues to engage online rather than in face-to-face meetings. A fourth round of negotiations has not been ruled out, but it is unlikely to involve the two countries’ presidents, given that their negotiating positions still offer little hope of a deal ready to be signed at a leaders’ summit. As if further evidence was needed that these talks are mostly performative exercises devoid of any sincere effort to bring the fighting to an end, within hours of the meeting in Istanbul ending, Russia and Ukraine launched fresh air attacks against each other’s Black Sea shores.While all this appears to mirror the patterns of the previous two rounds of talks, this third round, however, took place in a different context than the earlier two meetings. On July 14, Trump set a deadline of fifty days for the fighting to stop. If this deadline passes without a ceasefire agreement, he will consider imposing hefty secondary sanctions on Russia’s remaining trade partners, in an effort to starve Moscow’s war economy of crucial foreign income. To date, the Kremlin has been able to sell heavily discounted oil and gas to willing buyers like India and China, both of whom are also critical to sustaining Russia’s war effort by supplying explosives and engines for Russia’s drone fleet.The first ten days of this 50-day ultimatum have now passed. While the talks in Istanbul might be seen as a sign that Kyiv and Moscow are taking Trump seriously, the lack of tangible results suggests otherwise. There is no indication that either Russia or Ukraine have moved from their maximalist demands. Russia keeps insisting on the recognition of its illegal occupation in Ukraine, on future limits to Ukraine’s military strength, and on a permanent blocking of the country’s accession to Nato. Ukraine meanwhile asks for its territorial integrity to be restored and its sovereignty, including its ability to determine its alliance arrangements, to be respected.Nor do developments on and around the battlefields in Ukraine offer any signs that Moscow or Kyiv are ready even for a ceasefire. Russia keeps making incremental gains along the 1000 km of frontlines in Ukraine. And the Kremlin keeps pounding Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, with nightly air attacks at unprecedented scales of hundreds of drones and missiles that have repeatedly overwhelmed Ukraine’s already stretched air defence systems.Yet, Ukraine has been buoyed by the promise of more US arms deliveries — paid for by other Nato allies — and the continuing commitments by its international partners to support the country, including at the recent Nato summit in The Hague and the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome. Add to that Trump’s apparent pivot away from Putin and his recently more constructive relationship with Zelensky, and it becomes clear why Kyiv, like Moscow, thinks that time is on its side.Both may be proven wrong. Zelensky’s latest efforts to consolidate his power — a large-scale cabinet reshuffle and a decree to curb the independence of two of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies — have caused alarm among EU officials in Brussels. More importantly, they have also triggered rare public protests against the government in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, including Dnipro, Lviv, and Odesa. The protests may not get enough traction to pose a real danger to the government, but they indicate that support for Zelensky is not unconditional, something that the Ukrainian president appeared to acknowledge when he announced plans to submit an additional bill to parliament protecting the independence of the embattled anti-corruption agencies. And crucially, what is widely seen as a power grab by the president’s inner circle also has the potential of undermining public morale at a critical time in the war.All of this also feeds into a Russian narrative of Zelensky as an illegitimate leader of his country who Russia cannot negotiate with. But it would be a mistake to assume that Russia...
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