LONDON, July 16 — The mechanics of peace between Ukraine and Russia have never been straightforward, but since the full-scale invasion began, the fundamental arithmetic has not changed: neither side believes it can afford to settle on the other’s terms, and the gap between their public positions remains a chasm that no mediator has yet bridged. On closer reading of the negotiation timeline, the pattern is one of early, hopeful encounters that collapsed under the weight of events on the ground.
The first rounds took place in Belarus in late February and March 2022, just weeks after the invasion began on February 24. Those talks produced little beyond an agreement to keep talking.
The face-to-face meeting in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, looked more promising: Ukraine proposed neutral status in exchange for security guarantees, a formula that, had it held, would have addressed one of Moscow’s stated pre-war demands. But the catch is that Russia withdrew from talks altogether in April 2022, after the discovery of the Bucha massacre shifted the political terrain irreversibly. No amount of diplomatic choreography could restore the momentum after that.
Since then, the talks have been mediated by Turkey, the United Nations, and Saudi Arabia — each bringing different leverage and different constraints to the table. Turkey, a NATO member that has maintained working channels with both Kyiv and Moscow, has hosted multiple rounds of prisoner exchanges and grain-deal negotiations, but a comprehensive political settlement has remained out of reach.
The United Nations has provided a forum for technical discussions, particularly around food and fertilizer exports, but has not been able to move the needle on territorial questions. Saudi Arabia’s entry into the mediation space is the most recent development: in August 2023, Riyadh hosted a peace summit in Jeddah with representatives from over 40 countries. The catch is that Russia was not invited, which limited the summit’s practical effect to building consensus among Ukraine’s supporters rather than engaging the adversary directly.
Ukraine’s terms, Russia’s calculus
President Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan, proposed in November 2022, sets out Ukraine’s maximalist position with clarity. The plan calls for restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the complete withdrawal of Russian troops, and the establishment of a tribunal for war crimes. Those three elements — territory, troops, and accountability — are non-negotiable from Kyiv’s perspective, and they are precisely the points on which Moscow has shown no willingness to bend.
The mechanics here are simple: as long as Ukraine insists on the 1991 borders and Russia insists on keeping the territory it has occupied, there is no deal to be had. Russia’s own stated position has shifted over time.
In the early months of the war, Moscow demanded Ukraine’s demilitarization and a guarantee that it would never join NATO — demands that were central to the Istanbul talks. After the annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022, the Kremlin added the recognition of those annexations as a precondition. Follow the money and the military logistics: Russia now controls roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, and its leadership has shown no sign of treating that as a bargaining chip.
The longer the war continues, the more entrenched those positions become.
The mediators and their limits
Turkey’s role as mediator is the most established, dating back to the early Istanbul talks. President Erdogan has positioned himself as a broker who can speak to both sides, and Turkey has hosted multiple rounds of negotiations on prisoner exchanges and the Black Sea grain corridor. But the catch is that Turkey’s leverage is limited: it can offer a venue and a channel, but it cannot compel either side to accept terms it considers unacceptable.
The same constraint applies to the United Nations, which has focused on humanitarian and economic issues rather than the core political questions of territory and sovereignty. Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah summit in August 2023 represented an attempt to broaden the diplomatic coalition behind Ukraine’s peace plan.
Over 40 countries sent representatives, including several from the Global South that had previously maintained a neutral stance. But without Russia at the table, the summit could not produce a negotiated outcome — only a statement of principles that Moscow ignored. The practical effect was to isolate Russia diplomatically, but isolation is not the same as negotiation.
No comprehensive ceasefire or peace agreement has been reached as of today. The talks continue in various formats — bilateral channels, multilateral summits, back-channel discussions — but the fundamental obstacle remains the same: the two sides do not agree on what the war is about, and they do not agree on what peace would look like.
Until that changes, the mechanics of negotiation will produce process, not resolution.
What to watch next
The next phase of diplomacy will test whether the existing mediation structures can adapt to a protracted war. Turkey and Saudi Arabia both have incentives to keep the diplomatic track alive — Turkey for regional influence and economic reasons, Saudi Arabia for its broader ambitions as a global broker. But the key variable is not the mediator; it is whether either Ukraine or Russia sees a change in its battlefield position that alters its calculation of what it can accept.
As long as both sides believe they can gain more by fighting than by negotiating, the talks will remain a secondary front — important, but not decisive.
