The talks between Ukraine and Russia on the neutral turf of Turkey turned into a geopolitical game of theatrics and narrative competition following the announcement that Vladimir Putin would not attend.

NATO Secretary Mark Rutte traveling to Turkey (a posturing participant) is yet another indication of the stupidity of it all.  Ukraine is not a NATO country and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, while it may be grounded in the origin of NATO encroachment, does not involve NATO unless you inject the ancillary issues into the equation.   All of this extraneous party posturing shows the reason why Russian President Putin did not attend.

After a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, Zelenskyy chose to leave for home announcing he would send a delegation as the Russian group sat waiting for their peers to arrive.  The back-and-forth between the two nations played out all day without any substantive negotiations or discussions.   Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg sat around in a holding pattern waiting to see if the two sides would eventually have representatives in place to talk to each other.

Making a statement from Air Force One, President Trump seemed to encapsulate the dynamic saying he did not think any progress was likely until he personally met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Look, nothing is gonna happen until Putin and I get together,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One en route to the United Arab Emirates. “And he wasn’t gonna go … He wasn’t going if I wasn’t there. And I don’t believe anything will happen, whether you like it or not, until he and I get together. But we are gonna have to get it solved because too many people are dying.”

Later this afternoon Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to confirm that a Putin/Trump meeting was going to be needed to break the stalemate.