Talks between Ukraine and Russia commenced within the first week of the war. Within the first two weeks, mediation efforts were undertaken by Israel and several European countries. However, aside from agreements on war-related policies, such as opening humanitarian corridors, the negotiations yielded no significant results. Additionally, a Ukrainian negotiator was later found dead under suspicious circumstances—either due to poor intergovernmental coordination between Ukrainian agencies or because he was deliberately killed by Ukrainian authorities for unknown reasons. At this time, the exact cause remains uncertain.
The February and March talks were widely considered ineffective in advancing diplomacy between the two states. Subsequent negotiations were mediated by Turkey during the Antalya and Istanbul meetings.
The negotiations in Turkey are considered the first truly viable blueprint for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine in the conflict. The foreign ministers of both countries met with the Turkish foreign minister as a mediator. While the first meeting did not yield any concrete results, by the end of the talks, there was a sense of cautious optimism.
Discussions continued for days, and even Ukrainian President Zelensky acknowledged that the negotiations seemed more realistic than those held in the early weeks of the war. Talks extended from March 10 to May 2022.
The Turkish-mediated peace plan was the closest the two sides came to a ceasefire before the events of 2025. In fact, Ukraine reportedly accepted the vast majority of Russia’s demands. However, the deal ultimately fell apart.
The details remain unclear. Russia claims that European countries sabotaged the agreement and pushed Zelensky toward a strategy of total war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine asserts that Russia’s full list of demands was unacceptable. Russia also maintains that a document from the Turkish-mediated talks was signed by the Ukrainian delegation but later reneged upon.
However, it is important to note that Russia has been accused of fabricating information, and the Ukrainian delegation lacked the legal authority to sign a binding agreement, making the validity of this document questionable.
In the end, the Istanbul talks amounted to nothing, and the war continued.
Since then, Ukraine has maintained a set of fundamental principles for negotiation: a complete return to the 1991 borders, compensation from Russia, and security guarantees. However, negotiations were effectively stalled for months at a time.
A year into the war, China published its peace proposal on the first anniversary of the conflict. Russian officials responded positively, while Ukrainian officials saw it as a potential new blueprint for peace. However, by the end, the West dismissed the Chinese proposal as a sham. Despite this, Ukraine engaged in negotiations with China as a mediator as late as 2024.
Several prospective mediators have since failed to materialize a peace deal. Attempts by Brazil, African delegates, and others came to nothing. Even Indonesia proposed a peace plan, but Ukraine dismissed these initiatives as uneventful agreements that failed to meet its demands and proposals, ultimately leading to their rejection.
However, the foundation for a new peace deal began to take shape in August 2023, when Saudi Arabia started hosting delegations and peace negotiations for the conflict in Jeddah—an effort that would later prove significant.
As the months dragged on, negotiations stalled. Talks reached a dead end, blocked by stubbornness, geopolitical realities, and conflicting ambitions. Such meetings continued sporadically throughout 2024 but yielded no tangible results.
However, 2025 has arrived, and in our current year, things may look promising—though time will tell whether this optimism ages well or poorly by year’s end.
Trump won the U.S. election in 2024, and his stance on Ukraine is, to say the least, highly unconventional. In fact, the vast majority of Europeans and Americans consider him pro-Russia.
Under Trump’s leadership, America does not share Biden’s vision that a return to the 1991—or even 2014—borders is feasible, nor does it push for Ukraine’s NATO membership. Trump has even suggested that Zelensky would lose if a Ukrainian election were held today.
Russia and the U.S. proceeded to negotiate directly, without involvement from other parties, in Saudi Arabia. The infamous Trump-Zelensky meeting is a story of its own, widely regarded as one of several blows to U.S. public perception. Meanwhile, American military aid to Ukraine was temporarily suspended.
Currently, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is in Moscow negotiating a peace deal with the Russians. The outcome remains to be seen.