The Evolution of Diplomatic Engagement in the Russo-Ukrainian War (2022–2026) 1/3

Szerző: Külpologika | ápr 19, 2026 | Elemzés, Foreign Relations, Háború

Written by: Elena Moiseeva

Introduction

In 2025 and 2026, the round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which have stalled for a long time in the past two year finally seems to have renewed momentum. As such, it is a time of reflection on both the previous attempts at negotiations and speculations. This article tries to approach the negotiations through the lenses of the members of the negotiating parties. The selection of negotiators signals what type of bargaining a side believes is possible, be it normative diplomacy, political theatre, or operational problem-solving. It also signals who holds the mandate to make commitments that can be executed.

Earlier rounds of talks illustrate this point sharply. In both the 2022 Istanbul process and the renewed 2025 Istanbul rounds, Vladimir Medinsky led the Russian delegation – a choice widely read as an ideological and narrative-forward posture rather than a technically empowered, war-termination team. On the Ukrainian side, Andriy Yermak functioned as the central political gatekeeper for much of the period – meaning real proximity to decision-making, but also a delegation logic dominated by political control rather than operational bargaining.

In early 2026, the picture is visibly different. A new round of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks is scheduled to continue February 4–5 in Abu Dhabi. The reported line-ups are more security-professional than diplomat-heavy: Rustem Umerov is positioned as Ukraine’s top negotiator, while Kyrylo Budanov, a military-intelligence figure, has moved into the centre of the Ukrainian negotiating architecture. On the Russian side, Igor Kostyukov is reported to head Moscow’s delegation, with a parallel economic channel linked to Kirill Dmitriev.

This shift away from symbolic political emissaries and toward intelligence, military, and security-adjacent actors does not guarantee peace. But it does change the type of bargaining that is most likely happening: less about moral narrative and public positioning, and more about enforceable parameters. To understand the trend of the negotiating process better, this article aims to look over the trends of the previous iterations of talks.

From a bargaining-theory perspective, war termination fails less often because “words are missing,” and more often because credible commitment and enforcement are missing. The composition of a delegation is therefore an observable proxy for three latent variables:

Mandate: Can the negotiator commit the head of state/head of government credibly?
Implementation capacity: Can the negotiator deliver compliance within the security apparatus?
Information access: Does the negotiator possess a realistic picture of battlefield constraints and red lines?

When a delegation is dominated by career diplomats, negotiations tend to emphasise legal framing, sequencing of declarations, and formal texts. When dominated by political appointees, talks often become “two-level games”: negotiators optimise for domestic audience costs, coalition management, and blame avoidance. When dominated by intelligence/military professionals, talks tend to pivot to operational parameters: lines, monitoring, prisoner exchanges, incident prevention, and phased deconfliction.

1. Initial attempts at peace

The initial phase of negotiations took place in a distinct geopolitical reality: the „fog of war” was dense, the survival of the Ukrainian state was uncertain, and the Russian leadership operated under the assumption of a rapid military victory. The diplomatic track during this period was characterised by maximalist Russian demands and a Ukrainian delegation fighting for immediate humanitarian relief and the preservation of sovereignty.

1.1 The rounds of talk in Belarus

The first direct contact between the belligerents occurred on February 28, 2022, merely four days after the commencement of the full-scale invasion. The venue was the Gomel region of Belarus, near the Pripyat River – a location fraught with logistical peril and symbolic weight. Because the dissolution of the Soviet Union was agreed in Belarus (the Belovezha Accords), the fact that the first Russia–Ukraine negotiating rounds in early 2022 were also held on Belarusian territory carried an obvious historical symmetry. Given that Vladimir Putin has repeatedly framed the USSR’s collapse as a major geopolitical disaster, situating talks in Belarus can be read as a deliberate symbolic echo, an implicit “rewriting of 1991” no less. For Ukraine, the choice of the venue, Belarus, was a point of contention. The Ukrainian delegation, fearing for their safety and refusing to travel directly through Belarusian territory due to the involvement of Belarusian forces in the invasion, travelled via Poland, entering the venue by helicopter. While Alexander Lukashenko facilitated the talks, Ukraine viewed him as a co-aggressor, eroding trust in the neutrality of the setting. The very fact of agreeing to talks mattered more than the venue details: it established a minimal contact channel and, at least nominally, a pathway for limited arrangements (humanitarian pauses, prisoner exchanges) even while the invasion’s operational tempo remained high. The first meeting near the border ended without substantive agreement, but it did yield one concrete output: both sides returned to their capitals and agreed to continue consultations and reconvene. That is thin progress, but in escalation-dense conditions, it is still a measurable procedural outcome. The lack of trust, however, necessitated the eventual shift to Turkey.

Subsequent rounds followed rapidly:

Second Round (March 3, 2022): Held in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha region on the Belarus-Ukraine border. The second round again produced no ceasefire but did generate the first apparent negotiated mechanism: an understanding to create humanitarian corridors, envisaging temporary local ceasefires to allow civilian evacuation.
Third Round (March 7, 2022): Continued in Belarus, with the agenda expanding from immediate ceasefires to humanitarian corridors. The third round produced only small, technical improvements around corridor logistics, not a ceasefire or political settlement. Round 3 is best read as a split-track dynamic: limited operational coordination could be made to work, but the strategic track remained structured around demands Ukraine could not accept without collapsing sovereignty.

These early meetings were defined by a stark asymmetry in expectations. Russia, anticipating a swift capitulation, presented terms amounting to surrender: „denazification” (regime change), demilitarisation (reduction of the Ukrainian army to 50,000 troops), and the recognition of the „People’s Republics” in Donbas. The Ukrainian delegation, while physically exhausted and operating under the threat of assassination, focused on securing humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from besieged cities like Mariupol and Chernihiv

1.2 The Russian Delegation (2022)

Head of Delegation: Vladimir Medinsky

The appointment of Vladimir Medinsky, a presidential aide and former Minister of Culture, was a deliberate choice by Vladimir Putin. Medinsky is not a career diplomat or a military strategist. He is a revisionist historian and the architect of the Kremlin’s modern nationalist ideology. He serves as the Chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society and has authored a series of books titled Myths About Russia, which argue for the unity of the „Russian World” (the infamous Russky Mir) and deny the historical agency of Ukraine.

Key Members:

Leonid Slutsky: Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs. A controversial figure known for nationalist rhetoric, his presence ensured the legislative branch was represented, facilitating the potential ratification of any treaty.
Boris Gryzlov: Russian Ambassador to Belarus and former Interior Minister. As the representative to the Trilateral Contact Group (Minsk Agreements), he represented the continuity of the failed pre-2022 diplomatic track.
Alexander Fomin: Deputy Minister of Defence. A Colonel General responsible for international military cooperation. Fomin was the „technocrat” in the room, capable of discussing the specifics of demilitarisation, troop withdrawals, and ceasefires. His presence was crucial for any discussion involving the military-technical aspects of the Russian ultimatum.
Andrey Rudenko: Deputy Foreign Minister. A career diplomat focusing on the CIS region, providing the necessary protocol support.

Sending a cultural ideologue to negotiate a peace treaty signalled that for Russia, the war was primarily about identity and history. It was an operation to “correct the historical mistake” of Ukrainian statehood. Medinsky’s presence suggested the Kremlin viewed the talks as a pedagogical exercise to re-educate a wayward province rather than a negotiation between sovereign equals. Putting an ideologically aligned presidential aide in the lead also increased coherence between negotiations and domestic legitimation narratives. His pseudoscientific comments about the „extra chromosome” of the Russian people further underscored the chauvinistic lens through which the delegation viewed their counterparts. The blend of defence and Duma representation suggested that the goal was to present terms that signify imposed conditions, rather than reciprocal compromise.

2.2 The Ukrainian Delegation (2022)

Ukraine’s delegation was comprised of high-ranking officials from diverse political and ethnic backgrounds, united by the existential threat to the state.

Key Members:

Oleksii Reznikov: Minister of Defence. His presence was paramount. As the civilian head of the military, he represented the armed resistance of Ukraine. His participation showed that the military command was fully integrated into the political negotiation strategy.
Davyd Arakhamia: Head of the „Servant of the People” Parliamentary Faction. A close confidant of President Zelensky, Arakhamia led the delegation. Known for his casual attire (often wearing a baseball cap), he represented the „citizen-soldier” ethos of the Ukrainian resistance. His role was to ensure that any deal would have the political support of the parliament.
Mykhailo Podolyak: Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Office. The key communications strategist. His role was to manage the narrative, ensuring that Ukraine’s position was clearly articulated to the global media and that Russian disinformation was countered in real-time.²
Rustem Umerov: at the time, a member of Parliament (Holos Party). An ethnic Crimean Tatar with deep ties to Turkey and the Islamic world. Umerov’s inclusion was highly strategic. Later, he became the defence minister, currently Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
Mykola Tochytskyi: Deputy Foreign Minister. Provided professional diplomatic expertise and legal drafting skills.
Andriy Kostin: Lawyer, politician, and diplomat who has served in multiple high-level government roles. Formerly Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, he was known for his long legal career and involvement in Ukraine’s justice reforms during wartime.

The inclusion of Mykhailo Podolyak (adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine) indicates that the negotiation channel was structurally tied to the president’s immediate political control and communications apparatus, not delegated to autonomous diplomacy. Oleksii Reznikov signals that Ukraine anticipated bargaining over military-technical parameters (ceasefires, withdrawal mechanisms, humanitarian pauses) and needed a figure whose portfolio connects directly to implementation, and the presence of Davyd Arakhamia and Rustem Umerov suggests attention to domestic coalition discipline and the credibility of eventual ratification/legitimation pathways. The delegation was not led by the foreign minister or a purely diplomatic corps, which suggests Kyiv did not treat the process as a conventional interstate diplomatic normalisation track; it treated it as a wartime emergency bargaining channel tightly coupled to executive authority and defence realities.

2.3 The Shadow Envoy: Roman Abramovich

A unique figure in the 2022 negotiations was the sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Abramovich operated as an unofficial backchannel between Putin and Zelensky. He was not a formal member of the Russian delegation but was present at the talks in Gomel and Istanbul. His motivations were likely a mix of genuine desire to end the conflict and an attempt to protect his assets from Western sanctions by positioning himself as a peacemaker. Following a round of talks in Kyiv in early March 2022, Abramovich and two Ukrainian negotiators (including Umerov) suffered symptoms consistent with chemical poisoning, including peeling skin and temporary blindness. This incident, attributed by investigative journalists to hardliners in Moscow attempting to sabotage the talks, highlights the extreme physical danger inherent in the early diplomatic track. As political negotiations stalled, Abramovich’s role shifted toward humanitarian issues, specifically facilitating complex prisoner exchanges (such as the release of the Azovstal defenders) and the return of kidnapped children.

1.2 The Antalya and Istanbul Process: The Search for a Treaty

As the Russian offensive on Kyiv stalled and logistical failures mounted, the negotiations shifted to Turkey, a NATO member maintaining complex ties with both Moscow and Kyiv. Ankara’s mediation, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, provided a more professional diplomatic environment.

The Antalya Summit (March 10, 2022)

The first high-level contact occurred in Antalya between the Foreign Ministers: Sergey Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine. While this meeting yielded no breakthrough, it elevated the talks from the working group level to the ministerial level, signalling a recognition by Moscow that the war would not be resolved solely on the battlefield.

The Istanbul Peace Talks (March 29, 2022)

The most substantive negotiations of the early war period took place at the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul. Here, the Ukrainian delegation presented the „Istanbul Communiqué”, a detailed framework for a treaty on security guarantees.

Permanent Neutrality: Ukraine offered to renounce its aspirations for NATO membership and adopt a status of permanent neutrality. This included a ban on foreign military bases and nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil.
Security Guarantees: In exchange for neutrality, Ukraine demanded „Article 5-style” security guarantees. The proposed guarantors included the permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia, US, UK, France, China) alongside Turkey, Germany, Canada, Israel, and Poland.
The Crimean Compromise: The draft treaty proposed a 15-year consultation period to resolve the status of Crimea diplomatically, with a mutual commitment not to use force to resolve the issue. This was a significant shift, as it implied Russia engaging in discussions about the status of territory it had constitutionally annexed in 2014.
Donbas: The status of the occupied territories in Donbas was to be determined in direct negotiations between Presidents Putin and Zelensky.

The Collapse of the Istanbul Process

Despite the initial optimism, the Istanbul process collapsed in April 2022. Several critical factors drove this breakdown:

The Bucha Massacre: The liberation of Kyiv oblast revealed evidence of widespread atrocities in Bucha and Irpin. President Zelensky stated that negotiating with Russia became politically and morally impossible for Ukrainian society following these revelations.
Russian Recalcitrance: While Russian negotiators in Istanbul seemed open to the Ukrainian draft, hardliners in Moscow, including Putin, reportedly rejected the flexibility on Crimea. Russia continued to demand recognition of its sovereignty over the occupied regions.
Western Hesitation: Western partners, particularly the US and UK, expressed scepticism about the proposed security guarantees. They were reluctant to commit to a treaty that could drag them into a direct war with Russia without a total defeat of the Russian military first.

2. The Interregnum: Frozen Diplomacy and Transactional Agreements (2022–2024)

Following the collapse of the Istanbul process, high-level political negotiations effectively ceased for over two years. The conflict entered a phase of attrition, and diplomatic engagement was strictly limited to transactional, humanitarian, and economic agreements.

2.1 The Black Sea Grain Initiative

The most significant diplomatic achievement of this period was the Black Sea Grain Initiative, signed in July 2022. Mediated by the UN and Turkey, this agreement allowed for the export of Ukrainian agricultural products through a maritime corridor. It proved that Russia and Ukraine could reach specific, limited agreements even while waging total war. However, it was not a peace treaty or anything even remotely close to it; it was a commercial arrangement necessitated by global food security pressures. Due to this fact, Russia suspended the deal in October 2022 and withdrew completely in July 2023. Ukraine responded by establishing a unilateral „humanitarian corridor” protected by coastal defence systems, effectively bypassing the Russian naval blockade.

2.2 The Decree of No Negotiation

On October 4, 2022, following Russia’s formalised, legal annexation of four Ukrainian regions (Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk), President Zelensky signed a decree formally ruling out any negotiations with Vladimir Putin. This legal barrier codified the stalemate: Ukraine would not negotiate with the current Russian leadership, and Russia demanded recognition of its annexations as a precondition for talks.

2.3 The Professional Backchannel: Burns and Naryshkin

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, high-level face-to-face contact between U.S. and Russian officials became exceedingly rare. The primary conduit for strategic de-confliction was the channel established between CIA Director William Burns and Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). This channel was rigorously insulated from political bargaining regarding territory; its sole mandate was the management of existential risks.

A defining moment in this track occurred on November 14, 2022, in Ankara, Turkey. Hosted by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), this meeting was the first in-person engagement between spy chiefs since the war began. The parameters of the discussion were strictly delineated. The White House National Security Council explicitly stated that Burns was „not conducting negotiations of any kind” regarding the settlement of the war. Instead, the agenda was focused on delivering a stern warning regarding the consequences of nuclear weapon use by the Russian Federation and discussing the status of unjustly detained American citizens.

The operational discipline of this period was notable. U.S. officials briefed their Ukrainian counterparts ahead of Burns’s travel to Turkey, adhering to the „nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” principle that underpinned the Biden administration’s coalition management. This transparency was designed to prevent the erosion of trust between Washington and Kyiv, ensuring that Zelensky’s government did not fear a great-power condominium being negotiated over its head.

2.4 The Prisoner Swap Track: A Separate Peace?

Parallel to the nuclear risk channels, a separate, highly effective track existed for the negotiation of prisoner exchanges. This culminated in the massive swap of August 2024, the largest since the Cold War, which saw the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.

This track demonstrated that even amidst total geopolitical confrontation, Washington and Moscow retained the capacity for complex, reciprocal transactions when specific interests aligned. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his team maintained „regular and routine touch” with the families of detainees, and the eventual deal required the coordination of multiple nations, including Germany and Slovenia. However, the success of these humanitarian negotiations created a misleading precedent for the incoming Trump administration. It fostered a belief that if specific „deals” could be struck regarding prisoners, similar transactional logic could be applied to questions of sovereignty and territorial integrity. This miscalculation would become apparent in the Oval Office in February 2025.

2.5 The Breakdown of the „Peace Formula” Consensus

Before 2025, Ukraine had successfully rallied a broad international coalition around President Zelensky’s „Peace Formula.” Through a series of high-level meetings in Copenhagen, Jeddah, Malta, and Davos, Ukraine sought to engage not just the West but also the „Global South” and neutral nations in a dialogue grounded in international law.

The Davos meeting in January 2024, attended by 83 countries and international organisations, represented the high-water mark of this diplomatic offensive. The subsequent Summit on Peace in Ukraine, held at the Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland in June 2024, attracted 92 nations. Crucially, however, Russia was not invited, and China refused to participate, limiting the summit’s ability to force a cessation of hostilities.

By the time the political transition occurred in Washington in January 2025, the „Peace Formula” process had stalled. The global consensus was fracturing, with Russia successfully framing the conflict as a war of attrition that it could sustain indefinitely and creating the ideological framework for the international community, portraying it as a Western hegemonic incursion into Russia’s national security sphere. This stagnation provided the incoming Trump administration with the pretext to abandon the multilateral, values-based approach in favour of bilateral coercion.

2.6 The Rupture

The meeting on February 28, 2025, was intended to be the inaugural strategic dialogue between the re-elected Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. Instead, it became a diplomatic catastrophe that redefined the relationship as one of strategic imbalance or a coercive alliance rather than an honest one.

The atmosphere in the Oval Office was charged with historical grievance. President Trump, harbouring deep-seated resentment over the events of his first term – specifically the impeachment inquiry triggered by his 2019 phone call with Zelensky – approached the meeting not as a strategic review but as a settling of accounts.

Reports indicate that the President frequently diverted the conversation away from the current battlefield dynamics to relitigate the past. He referenced the Mueller investigation and the „phoney witch hunt,” explicitly telling Zelensky that Vladimir Putin had been „used” by U.S. political actors to damage Trump’s presidency. This conflation of personal political history with state policy disoriented the Ukrainian delegation, who had arrived prepared to discuss ammunition logistics and air defence integration.

2.7 The culmination of the dispute

The tension escalated when the discussion turned to the conditions of future U.S. aid. The Trump administration, represented by the President and Vice President JD Vance, demanded that Ukraine immediately endorse a 30-day unconditional ceasefire proposal. When Zelensky pushed back, arguing that a pause without security guarantees would merely allow Russian forces to regroup and fortify their positions in the Donbas, the President’s demeanour became hostile.

Witnesses described the President using a „raised voice” and labelling Zelensky „disrespectful to this country” and „disrespectful to me”. The ultimatum delivered was stark and stripped of diplomatic nuance: „Make a deal, or we’re out… And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty”.

The meeting’s conclusion was perhaps its most damaging moment. Abruptly terminating the session while media cameras were still present or just leaving, President Trump remarked, „I think we’ve seen enough. This is going to be great television”. This comment, reducing a discussion about a war that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives to the logic of reality entertainment, reverberated globally. It signalled to Moscow that the U.S. president viewed the conflict through a prism of spectacle and ego, rather than strategic imperative.

2.8 The Failure of the „Minerals for Security” Deal

A critical, often overlooked dimension of this meeting was the planned economic framework. Ukraine, recognising the transactional nature of the new administration, had prepared a proposal to grant U.S. companies preferential access to its critical raw mineral reserves – titanium, lithium, and beryllium – resources vital for the aerospace and battery industries. This „minerals partnership” was designed to anchor U.S. interests in Ukraine’s survival.

Senator Lindsey Graham had explicitly advised Zelensky before the meeting to „focus on the present minerals agreement” and to defer the more contentious security discussions. However, the toxicity of the personal interaction caused this deal to collapse. Zelensky left the White House without signing the framework, representing a massive strategic failure for both sides. The consequences of the Oval Office breakdown were operational, not just rhetorical. In the days following the meeting, the Trump administration suspended the flow of intelligence and military aid to Ukraine for approximately one week. For a military engaged in high-intensity combat, a week-long blackout of satellite intelligence and targeting data is a lifetime.

The aid was only resumed after Zelensky, under extreme duress, agreed to publicly endorse the administration’s demand for a 30-day ceasefire proposal. This capitulation was humiliating for Kyiv and ultimately futile; as predicted by Ukrainian intelligence, the Russian Federation promptly rejected the ceasefire proposal, viewing it as a sign of Western weakness.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-2022-peace-proposal-was-a-blueprint-for-the-destruction-of-ukraine/