A flurry of intense diplomacy over Russia’s war against Ukraine, centered around the first direct peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow in three years and a long phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, ended earlier this week without a breakthrough.
The main objective set out by Ukraine and the West, a 30-day cease-fire, was not achieved.
Russian attacks continued during and after the talks, and Ukraine launched drone strikes on defense industry targets in Russia in the wake of the negotiations.
In a social media post after his two-hour-plus conversation with Putin, Trump suggested that the United States might be stepping back from efforts to broker a peace deal, four months after he entered office following a campaign in which he had said he could end the war in a day or two.
Now what?
With Russia’ full-scale invasion of Ukraine well into its fourth year, RFE/RL examines what to watch and where things may be headed.
More Talks? A Memorandum?
In his post on Truth Social after the phone call with Putin on May 19, Trump said negotiations between Russia and Ukraine “toward a cease-fire and more importantly, an end to the war” would start “immediately.” He mentioned the Vatican as a possible venue and concluded, “Let the process begin!”
There was no word from Kyiv or Moscow on a new meeting, but Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on May 21 that he sides were likely to hold “technical-level talks" next week, possibly at the Vatican.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who also spoke to Trump on May 19, said the next day that “Ukraine is ready for any negotiation format that delivers results,” but that “if Russia continues to put forward unrealistic conditions and undermine progress, there must be tough consequences.”
So far, Russia has given no sign that it is prepared to make any substantial compromise. It has often signaled the opposite, repeating long-stated positions that Ukraine has called unacceptable.
In his own statement after the call with Trump, Putin repeated his mantra about the need to eliminate the “root causes” of the war -- blame for which, despite the fact that Russia launched the invasion unprovoked, he has continued to lay entirely at the feet of Kyiv and the West.
While Trump spoke of immediate negotiations, Putin focused on something Trump did not mention and was couched in the kind of ifs, ands, and buts that analysts say Putin has used to slow any move toward a truce. In the meanwhile, Moscow seeks to recruit more soldiers, build more weapons, and improve its position on the battlefield.
Russia, he said, is “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum regarding a possible future peace treaty with the definition of a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement, and so on.”
Continuing to reject an immediate truce, he said steps toward a solution could include “a possible cease-fire for a certain period of time if appropriate agreements are reached.”
Zelenskyy suggested that a bilateral memorandum could be a possibility, but that Ukraine would have to see what Russia is proposing before making any decisions.
‘The Crux’
Whatever the status of the negotiations process, there are several big barriers to progress. Territory is one of them.
Analysts often say that grabbing land is not Russia’s main goal -- that what Putin really wants is the subjugation of Ukraine, and that aside from Crimea and perhaps part of the Donbas, he would be satisfied with any amount of land as long as the country and its government are Russia-friendly and firmly in Moscow’s grip.
Part of the litany of complaints Putin has used to justify the full-scale invasion is that the West has turned Ukraine into the ‘anti-Russia’ -- though many say that Putin has done that himself, first by seizing Crimea in 2014 and fomenting war in the Donbas in 2014, and then by launching the full-scale invasion in 2022.
For now, though, territory is perhaps the most concrete sticking point between Kyiv and Moscow.
In September 2022, Putin baselessly claimed that four Ukrainian regions -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson -- belong to Russia. Russian forces held only parts of those regions at the time, and that’s still the case.
But according to Ukrainian officials who spoke to multiple media outlets on condition of anonymity, the Russian delegation in Istanbul said there could be no cease-fire until Ukraine withdraws its troops from those regions -- and demanded international recognition that they belong to Russia.
Ukraine has called those demands unacceptable, and Zelenskyy repeated this week that Kyiv will not withdraw troops from its own territory.
Russia’s progress toward taking the parts of those regions it does not hold has been slow and extremely costly. The capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya remain in Kyiv’s hands.
“[The] Russian army will not be able to take control of the remaining parts of the four regions it has already occupied. First of all, this is a very large area, and even at last year’s pace, the Russian army would not be able to fully capture even one region -- such as Donetsk,” said Yan Matveyev, a Russian military analyst who lives outside the country.
The prospect of Russia seizing the city of Kherson, which lies across the Dnieper River from the current positions of its forces, “seems absolutely fantastical and impossible,” Matveyev told Current Time on May 21.
At the same time, after a major counteroffensive fizzled in 2023, the chances of Ukraine regaining a substantial amount of land anytime soon are seen as very slim.
“Russia wants what they do not currently have and are not entitled to, and Ukraine wants what they cannot regain militarily,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on May 20. “And that’s been the crux of the challenge.”
Stepping Away?
Faced with the yawning gap between the Russian and Ukrainian positions, is the United States stepping away from the push for peace?
In his Truth Social post on May 19, Trump suggested that Ukraine and Russia might be left to their own devices, saying that the conditions for a cease-fire and an end to the war “will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.”
In comments to reporters in the Oval Office later the same day, though, Trump repeated the warning that Washington could step aside but indicated that it had not quite reached that point yet, and said that he still believes progress is possible.
“In my head I definitely have a red line” on when to stop pushing the sides to reach agreement, he said, “but I don't want to say what it is because it makes negotiations so much more difficult.”
“It's a European situation, it should be this way, but the previous administration got us involved. I feel something may happen,” Trump said. “If not, we'll walk away and leave it to them.”
Sanctions And Support
At the same time, Trump also cited the chance for progress as a reason to avoid slapping additional sanctions on Russia for now, even as the European Union imposed its 17th package of sanctions on Moscow since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, along with Britain, considers what European leaders say would be “massive” new punitive measures.
Hitting Russia with new sanctions could “make the whole thing very much worse and now I still have a sense [that] things still can be done,” Trump said.
Asked whether the United States would continue to send Ukraine weapons in the future, Trump also indicated that would depend on what happens with the push for peace.
“We'll have to see. I believe Putin still wants to do this,” he said, meaning end the war. “I think Putin has had enough.”
Many observers disagree, arguing that Putin is unlikely to make concessions in the absence of major setbacks on the battlefield or upheaval in Russia, neither of which is expected any time soon.
As it stands, a substantial test of Russia’s intentions -- and of the West’s resolve -- may come when and if Moscow lays out its position on the path to peace, or its conditions for a cease-fire, as part of the memorandum that Putin has proposed.
It’s unclear when that might happen.
“There are no deadlines [for that process] and there cannot be any,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 20. “It is clear that everyone wants to do this as quickly as possible, but, of course, the devil is in the details."
A senior adviser to Zelenskyy, Mykhaylo Podolyak, predicted Russia’s demands won’t change.
"They will sign a memorandum that is exactly what one could most reasonably expect, he told RBC-Ukraine on May 21. “This includes removing the so-called 'sources of war' -- which, in their view, means that Ukraine must cease to exist.”
