Delegations from Ukraine and Russia met for a second time in Istanbul in a month on June 2, 2025. Lacking, once more, have been the nation’s two leaders.
For a fleeting second forward of the primary assembly in mid-Could 2025, there existed the faintest prospect that Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine would be part of, sitting down in the identical room for face-to-face talks.
However it didn’t occur; few anticipated it might. On that event, Putin refused Zelenskyy’s provide of face-to-face talks in Istanbul.
Although neither chief met within the Istanbul summits, they’ve met earlier than.
In Paris in 2019, the 2 males sat down collectively as a part of what was often known as the Normandy Format talks. As a scholar of worldwide relations, I’ve interviewed individuals concerned within the talks. Some 5 years on, the best way the talks floundered after which failed can provide classes concerning the challenges as we speak’s would-be mediators now face.
Preliminary hopes
The Normandy Format talks began on the sidelines of occasions in June 2014 commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day landings. The purpose was to attempt to resolve the continued battle between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatist teams within the nation’s Donbas area within the east. That battle had just lately escalated, with pro-Russian separatists seizing key cities within the Donetsk and Luhansk after Russia illegally annexed the peninsula of Crimea in February 2014.
The talks continued periodically till 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Till that time, many of the dialogue was framed by two offers, the Minsk accords of 2014 and 2015, which set out the phrases for a ceasefire between Kyiv and the Moscow-armed insurgent teams and the situations for elections in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Volodymyr Zelenskyy attend the Normandy Format talks in Paris on Dec. 9, 2019.
Xinhua/Gao Jing through Getty Pictures
By the point of the sixth assembly in December 2019, the one time Zelenkyy and Putin have met in individual, some nonetheless hoped that the Minsk accords may kind a framework for peace.
Below dialogue
Zelenskyy was only some months into his presidency. He arrived in Paris with recent power and a want to seek out peace.
His electoral marketing campaign had centered on the promise of placing an finish to the unrest in Donbas, which had been rumbling on for years. The rising function of Russia within the battle, by supporting rebels financially and with volunteer Russian troopers, had difficult and escalated combating, and lots of Ukrainians have been weary of the influence of internally displaced those who it induced.
By all accounts, Zelenskyy went into Paris believing that he may make a take care of Putin.
“I want to return with concrete results,” Zelenskyy mentioned simply days earlier than assembly Putin. By then, the Ukrainian president’s solely contact with Putin had been over the telephone. “I want to see the person and I want to bring from Normandy understanding and feeling that everybody really wants gradually to finish this tragic war,” Zelenskyy mentioned, including, “I can feel it for sure only at the table.”
One in all Putin’s primary issues going into the talks was the lifting of Western sanctions imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea.
However the Russian president additionally needed to maintain Russia’s smaller neighbor underneath its affect. Ukraine gained independence after the autumn of the Soviet Union in 1991. However within the early years of the brand new century, Russia started to exert rising affect over the politics of its neighbor. This led to 2014, when a preferred revolution ousted pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and ushered in a pro-Western authorities.
Greater than something, Russia needed to arrest this shift and maintain Ukraine out of the European Union and NATO.
These wishes – Ukraine’s to finish the battle in Donbas, and Russia’s to curb the West’s involvement in Ukraine – fashioned the parameters for the Normandy talks.
And for a while, there gave the impression to be momentum to seek out compromise. French President Emmanuel Macron mentioned that the 2019 Paris talks had damaged years of stalemate and relaunched the peace course of. Putin’s evaluation was that the peace course of was “developing in the right direction.” Zelenskyy’s view was rather less enthusisastic: “Let’s say for now it’s a draw.”
Speaking previous one another
But the Putin-Zelenskyy assembly in 2019 in the end led to failure. Looking back, either side have been speaking previous one another and couldn’t attain settlement on the sequencing of key components of the peace plan.
Zelenskyy needed the safety provisions of the Minsk accords, together with a long-lasting ceasefire and the securing of Ukraine’s border with Russia, in place earlier than continuing with regional elections on devolving autonomy to the areas. Putin was adamant that the elections come first.
The success of the Normandy talks have been additionally hindered by Putin’s refusal to acknowledge that Russia was a celebration to the battle. Somewhat, he framed the Donbas battle as a civil battle between the Ukrainian authorities and the rebels. Russia’s function was merely to push the rebels to the negotiating desk on this take – a view that was greeted with skepticism by Ukraine and the West.
Consequently, the Normandy talks stalled. After which in February 2022, Russian launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Method ahead as we speak?
The nascent negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that started in Istanbul in Could 2025 signify the primary actual try to carry high-level delegations of either side collectively since 2019.
Lots of the identical challenges stay. The talks nonetheless revolve across the problems with safety, the standing of Donetsk and Luhansk, and prisoner exchanges – that final level being the one one wherein frequent floor seems to be discovered, each in 2019 and now.
However there are main variations – not least, three years of precise direct battle. Russia can not deny that it’s a social gathering of the battle, even when Moscow frames the battle as a particular army operation to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine.
And three years of battle have modified how the questions of Crimea and the Donbas are framed.
Within the Normandy talks, there was no discuss of recognizing Russian management over any Ukrainian territory. However current U.S. efforts to barter peace have included a “de-jure” U.S. recognition of Russian management in Crimea, plus “de-facto recognition” of Russia’s occupation of practically all of Luhansk oblast and the occupied parts of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
One other main distinction between the negotiation course of then and now could be who’s mediating.
The Normandy negotiations have been led by European leaders – German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Macron of France. All through the entire Normandy talks course of, solely Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia have been concerned as energetic contributors.
In the present day, it’s the USA taking the lead.
And this fits Putin. A continuing subject for Putin of the Normandy talks was that Germany and France have been by no means impartial mediators.
In President Donald Trump, Putin has discovered a U.S. chief who, at the least at first, appeared desperate to tackle the mantle from Europe.
However just like the Europeans concerned within the Normandy talks, Trump too is encountering related limitations to any significant progress.
Members of Ukrainian and Russian delegations attend peace talks on June 2, 2025, in Istanbul.
Turkish Ministry of International Affairs through Getty Pictures
The Paris peace talks, too, led to a prisoner change – however little extra. It seems that getting the leaders of Ukraine and Russia to agree on something extra formidable is as elusive now because it was when Putin and Zelenskyy met in 2019.
