How Russia’s call for peace talks turned into a diplomatic defeat for Putin

All the parties involved—Ukraine, Europe and Russia—staged their own elaborate performances in Turkey to influence the American president.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a show of being willing to meet with his Russian counterpart and talking with senior Western officials.

European leaders, for their part, helped Zelensky calibrate his approach after his dust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the White House earlier this year.

Putin’s gambit largely involved not turning up at all, instead delegating the task of handling the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years to some relatively minor officials after he himself had suggested the discussions. Their refusal to consider Trump’s proposal for a 30-day cease-fire effectively put the matter on ice.

Putin has signaled that his demands haven’t changed since the beginning of the war. Those demands have included territorial concessions by Kyiv, a radically downsized Ukrainian military and promises that Ukraine would never join NATO and that no NATO troops would be stationed in Ukraine.

Moscow says a cease-fire would only serve Kyiv’s interest by giving Ukraine’s armed forces time to refit and rearm. It has argued that any peace deal for Kyiv will only get worse with time because Russian forces are advancing deeper into Ukraine. Now Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies are reporting that Russia is amassing troops in the east of Ukraine in preparation for a renewed offensive, in an apparent bid to grab more territory before committing to any serious negotiations.

By sending a low-level delegation, identical to the one he sent to Turkey in 2022, Putin has flagged that he intends to stake out a position that Ukraine will likely find unacceptable, said Thomas Graham, a distinguished scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. Graham noted that during those talks early in the war, Russia’s military had suffered setbacks in its invasion, but not yet the catastrophic reversals of later that year that tarnished its reputation as a land power.

Putin’s hard-line strategy risks annoying Trump, who has lately appeared irritated with Putin for his intransigence, and who has come under increasing pressure at home to stiffen sanctions on Russia. European leaders, too, have sensed an opportunity to finally persuade an exasperated Trump to do more to back up his cease-fire demand.

“Putin put himself firmly in the wrong by not showing up," Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said on Thursday night, adding that no one can say that Europe hasn’t made enough of an effort to end the war.

Russia sent junior representatives to the peace summit in Istanbul.

“We will now try everything to empower Ukraine to be able to defend itself from the Russian attack, and Putin will eventually understand that he can’t go on like that," the conservative German leader said.

Friday’s meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian sides in Istanbul was the culmination of a carefully plotted diplomatic play by the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Poland. After Zelensky’s face-off with Trump in the White House, they counseled him to unconditionally accept Trump’s demands, including the call for a cease-fire, several European officials said.

The four leaders had several calls with Zelensky before visiting him in Kyiv last week, where they coached him about how to handle Trump’s unpredictable approach to brokering a peace deal. The group then spontaneously called Trump on his cellphone to inform him that Zelensky fully accepted his cease-fire proposals.

They then issued an ultimatum to Putin to accept a cease-fire or face sanctions against Russia’s vital oil and gas exports. European diplomats say their newly found resolve was made possible by the change of guard in Germany, where Merz is now willing to accept harsher sanctions against Moscow.

Caught flat-footed by the diplomatic offensive, Putin then proposed a peace summit in Istanbul—which he then refused to attend, instead dispatching junior representatives without a broad mandate to negotiate.

The EU initiative, which European officials say was designed to convince Trump that Putin is refusing his mediation, is a significant coup for both Zelensky and his European peers, who long struggled to rebut Trump’s criticism that they aren’t doing enough to end the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

“This allowed Europe to finally become the party of peace," said Ivan Krastev, a fellow with the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna who has met the Russian president on several occasions.

The onus is now on Putin to explain to Trump why he is refusing his initiative for a cease-fire, despite the offer from Zelensky and his European supporters, as well as leaders from nations such as Turkey and Brazil, Krastev said.

“From the very beginning, this has the aspects of a circus," said Graham, of the Council on Foreign Relations. “This was a show for one individual, and at the end of it all the question is, Who does Trump believe gave the better performance?"

Trump, who was in the wider region on a series of state visits, made some cryptic remarks about the possibility of joining the discussions in Istanbul himself until it became apparent that Putin wouldn’t be there.

Putin’s insistence to only be represented by junior aides in Istanbul excluded any possibility for a serious negotiation or commitment toward a cease-fire, making him look disrespectful to Trump, said Sinan Ulgen, director of the Istanbul-based think tank Edam. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to complain about the relatively junior Russian delegation, saying that only a meeting between Trump and Putin could achieve a breakthrough.

Zelensky made the most of the situation, telling reporters ahead of the Istanbul talks that “Trump needs to believe that Putin actually lies."

The EU, meanwhile, has been preparing to add pressure on Moscow. It is now drafting new sanctions including a ban on Nord Stream 2, a key natural gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany. The pipeline was completed in late 2021 but never came online because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Part of it was blown up by a team of Ukrainian commandos and civilian divers in 2022.

Indeed, the European maneuvering this week appeared designed in part to stiffen pressure on the U.S. to join them in tightening sanctions on Russia, said John Herbst, a retired U.S. diplomat who is now a senior director at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

Still, the question remains whether the U.S. president is willing to wield his power to put his Russian counterpart under more pressure to move toward peace—especially whether he will shut down Russia’s economic lifeline: its energy exports.

For that to happen, “it needs to become clear to Trump that there is no volition in Moscow," Ulgen said. “It’s not clear to me that Trump has internalized this."

Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com