M.K. Bhadrakumar
May 16 will stand out as a turning point, for good or bad, in the Ukraine conflict. The main thing is, Russia-Ukraine ‘peace talks’ have resumed in Istanbul and will hopefully carry forward the threads of the draft agreement negotiated in March 2022. But caveats must be added. The fact that it took Turkish President Recep Erdogan three hours to persuade Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to green light the negotiations speaks for itself.
On the other hand, Zelensky showed remarkable flexibility by violating his own presidential decree banning any such negotiations on the part of Ukrainian officials other than himself with Russian officials. Turkey showed again that it remains a significant influencer in the Ukraine conflict.
The result was an extraordinary spectacle. Reports mention that the Russian delegation had not one but three meetings, in fact — with a Turkish-American team followed by a Turkish-American-Ukrainian team and culminating in an exclusive huddle with the Ukrainian team.
The ‘bilateral’ Russian-Ukrainian negotiations reportedly touched on the topics of ceasefire options in the Ukraine conflict; a major prisoner exchange; a potential meeting between Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin; an agreement in principle to hold a follow-up meeting and so on.
The Ukrainian media reported that the Russian side repeated their demands for Kiev’s forces to vacate the remaining parts of the four eastern and southern regions that Moscow has annexed. Ukraine of course rejected the demand. Indeed, these talking points at the Istanbul meeting would have been a plateful for a meeting that lasted only for an hour and forty minutes.
Turkiye has joined as a stakeholder, as the pacemaking in Ukraine provides an opportunity for it to work closely with the US, which could have positive fallouts for the two main discords that put strains on it in the recent years — Syria and the Kurdish problem. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has taken a historic decision on May 12 to give up armed struggle and dissolve itself, which opens the possibility to end decades of political violence in Turkiye. The ‘peacemaker president’ in the White House can help Ankara to mediate a Kurdish settlement.
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