The meeting, which lasted barely two hours, was held in Istanbul's Dolmabahçe Palace, which stands on the European side of the Bosphorus. The talks on Friday, May 16, were the first direct discussions between Ukraine and Russia in over three years of war, and they quickly broke down.

Ten days of intense diplomatic maneuvers by Europeans and Americans failed to yield any real progress in Turkey: a ceasefire and a peace agreement now both seem more distant than ever, as the differences between the two belligerent parties appear insurmountable. Despite Turkey's diplomatic assistance, it would even be difficult to describe the meeting as the start of any genuine negotiation. As a symbol of this failure, a Russian drone attack on a minibus carrying civilians in northern Ukraine killed 9 people and injured 4, regional authorities announced on Saturday, the day after the discussions.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to come to Istanbul to meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, who was received in Ankara by Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, despite pressure from Donald Trump and leading European figures. After this missed connection, it took hours of additional American and Turkish mediation to convince the Russian and Ukrainian delegations to meet.

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