Delegations of Russia and Ukraine can leave Istanbul without starting negotiations

The Ukrainian delegation intends to discuss with Russia in Istanbul a single issue that concerns a possible temporary ceasefire for a month.

This is reported by the American edition of The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed Ukrainian officials. According to them, we are talking about the announcement of a 30-day truce and further control over the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Moscow made it clear the day before that Russian representatives are ready to discuss only the terms of peace based on previously adopted agreements of 2022, taking into account changes over the past three years.

Thus, the parties view even the very agenda of the negotiations in completely different ways. This is probably why the dialogue did not start at the scheduled 10 o'clock in Moscow. There are reasons to believe that the negotiations will fail without even starting.

Recall that on May 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Kiev to resume direct negotiations without preconditions. He stressed that they should be started without delay, and suggested a date and place — May 15 in Istanbul.

The head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, offered the Russian president a personal meeting in Istanbul, but ignored that call.

Today, on May 15, the Russian delegation arrived in the Turkish capital to participate in negotiations with Ukraine. The delegation consists of eight people, it is headed by Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky. He also headed the Russian delegation at previous talks with Ukraine, which took place in Istanbul in March 2022.

In this regard, the adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, said that Zelensky could not meet with Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky at the talks.

Earlier, EADaily reported that negotiations between the delegations of Russia and The Istanbul meetings will be held on Thursday, May 15, in the same place where they began and were interrupted in 2022 — in the working office of the Turkish presidential administration.