Ambitious plans for a bilateral summit between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to be losing momentum, just days after former U.S. President Donald Trump expressed confidence that such a meeting could occur within weeks.
Potential locations under consideration have ranged from Geneva and Vienna to Budapest and Istanbul. Putin and Zelensky have not met in person since 2019, three years prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The former U.S. president stated that he had “begun arrangements” for the summit, suggesting his belief that Putin had agreed to the meeting during a phone call on Monday.
However, this assessment may have been overly optimistic.
The Kremlin promptly offered its own, more ambiguous account of the conversation. Aide Yuri Ushakov indicated that Trump and Putin had discussed “the possibility of raising the level of representatives,” which could simply mean the participation of ministers, rather than envoys, in future discussions.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested that a meeting could transpire “within the next two weeks.” However, he cautioned, “we don’t know whether the Russian president will have the courage to attend such a summit,” urging efforts to “persuade” Putin.
Trump alluded to a “rough” situation for Russia should Putin decline to cooperate in the peace process, but he refrained from providing specific details.
Now, as the diplomatic flurry subsides, the prospect of a meeting between Putin and Zelensky seems to be further diminishing.
While Moscow outwardly expresses openness to bilateral talks between the two leaders, the preconditions it is attaching to such a meeting are likely to be unacceptable to the Ukrainian side.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated this week that Putin was prepared to meet with Zelensky, provided that all “issues” requiring consideration “at the highest level” were resolved beforehand. The Kremlin has employed this vague yet uncompromising language in the past to resist Ukrainian proposals for a bilateral meeting.
Last week, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff claimed that Russia had accepted security guarantees for Ukraine, calling it “a very significant step.”
However, it now appears that the proposed guarantees would be modeled on those initially presented by Moscow and rejected by Kyiv in 2022. These guarantees would involve Russia joining a group of countries with the power to veto military intervention in defense of Ukraine.
The proposal would also prohibit the stationing of Western troops in Ukraine, effectively leaving the nation defenseless in the event of a renewed Russian invasion. Lavrov stated on Thursday that any other security framework would be “an absolutely futile undertaking.”
Meanwhile, Zelensky has asserted that any meeting with Putin must occur after Kyiv’s allies agree on security guarantees, which would undoubtedly involve the support of Western forces and exclude Russia, rendering them unacceptable to Moscow.
Currently, neither Russia nor Ukraine appears willing to deviate from their established positions, and each accuses the other of undermining efforts to achieve a peace agreement.
While the possibility of a Putin-Zelensky summit appears remote at present, speculation about potential venues persists.
Following the recent diplomatic activity at the White House, Budapest has been mentioned as a potential location, with reports suggesting American support for the idea.
“They can come to Hungary at any time,” stated Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Sizjjarto. “Give us an hour’s notice beforehand, and we are ready to guarantee fair, decent, safe, and equal conditions for everyone in Hungary.”
However, not all parties consider the Hungarian capital sufficiently neutral ground. Prime Minister Viktor Orban is among the few European leaders who have maintained ties with Putin. He has also blocked funding for Ukraine and pledged to veto Ukrainian membership in the EU.
“Let’s be honest, Budapest did not support us,” Zelensky stated on Thursday. “I’m not saying that Orban’s policy was against Ukraine, but it was against supporting Ukraine,” he told reporters, adding that holding talks in Budapest would be “challenging.”
On Wednesday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk expressed opposition to Budapest hosting talks on X. The city was the location of a 1994 summit in which Kyiv relinquished its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in exchange for Russian security assurances. These assurances were later rendered meaningless by Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its full-scale invasion in 2022.
“Maybe I’m superstitious, but this time I would try to find another place,” Tusk quipped.
French President Emmanuel Macron raised the possibility of holding the summit in Switzerland, a militarily neutral European country with a long history of hosting high-stakes talks. Zelensky also suggested Vienna, the seat of several international organizations.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin, alleging war crimes in Ukraine. However, Switzerland and Austria, both ICC signatories, have stated that they would grant immunity to the Russian president if he attended peace talks.
Turkey has also been proposed as an option.
Istanbul has previously hosted three rounds of direct delegation-level talks between Ukraine and Russia since April, although they failed to produce any significant progress toward a ceasefire beyond an agreement on exchanging prisoners of war.
The Vatican and Saudi Arabia have also been mentioned by Ukraine as potential locations. The Vatican has long offered itself as a suitable venue, while Saudi Arabia has previously brokered prisoner exchanges between Kyiv and Moscow.
Away from high-level diplomacy, the war shows no sign of abating.
On Thursday, Ukraine announced that its armed forces had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, which borders Ukraine’s eastern regions of the Donbas.
Meanwhile, Russia launched its largest wave of strikes on Ukraine in weeks, resulting in one fatality and numerous injuries.
“There is still no signal from Moscow that they are truly going to engage in meaningful negotiations and end this war,” Zelensky said on social media. “Pressure is needed.”
For Ukraine to lose western Donetsk would mean the fall of a bulwark against any future Russian advance.
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There are inherent contradictions in the idea of the guarantees meant to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine again.
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Ukraine’s leader has taken issue with the American map, because of the amount of control it gives Russia.