Why is a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting, and why it might not happen

London – The presidents of Ukraine and Russia “have not been exactly the best friends,” said the president of the United States, Donald Trump, earlier this week, while pressing for a meeting in person that says he hopes he feels he feels the foundations for the end of the invasion of Ukraine and a half of Moscow of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for the last time in 2019, for unfortunate negotiations about the end of the conflict over low heat caused by the seizure of Russia of Crimea and the encouragement of a separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The 2019 meeting, which occurred shortly after Zelenskyy won power in a populist wave, ended with commitments to implement “all necessary fire support measures” before the end of that year and free all war prisoners.

Trump’s seemingly ironic evaluation of the tense relationship between the two leaders denies the toxic effect of more than a decade of Russian aggression against his neighbor.

And although the president of the United States suggested that the proposed sitting is the key result of their own recent meetings with Putin and Zelenskyy, it is still far from Putin will really, despite the insistence of the White House he has agreed.

Almost six years after their last meeting, Putin and Zelenskyy are locked in a war that both seem to consider existential. Trump’s return to the office has revived inactive peace efforts, but war parties are still very separated in key issues.

Simply gathering the two presidents in a room would be an important achievement, but, with hundreds of thousands of dead and the future of both countries in the line, it might not produce a positive result.

However, the White House has suggested that a bilateral meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin could help unite the Gulf. Trump seems positive just out of a summit with Putin in Alaska on Friday, followed by White House meetings with Zelenskyy and a group of European leaders on Monday.

“I hope President Putin is good, and if it is not, it will be a difficult situation,” Trump said Tuesday. “And I hope Zelenskyy, president Zelenskyy, does what he has to do. He also has to show some flexibility,” Trump added.

Despite Trump’s positivity, the meeting is far from guaranteed. Putin has repeatedly refused to meet with Zelenskyy during the conflict, having consistently sought to undermine the legitimacy of the Ukrainian president. Russian officials rarely use Zelenskyy’s name, preferring to refer to “the kyiv regime.”

Moscow is even accused by Ukraine of having sent teams to point to Zelenskyy during the first weeks of the invasion of 2022. Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said that Zelenskyy survived more than a dozen murder attempts in the first year of large -scale invasion.

Russian officials have been far from effusive in their comments on the proposed bilateral meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, and the trilateral meeting that involves Trump that the president of the United States has proposed as a follow -up.

“We are not rejecting any form of work, neither bilateral nor trilateral,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday, as mentioned by the State News Agency TASS.

Any meeting must be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the level of experts and then going through all the necessary stages to prepare the summits,” according to the Lavrov reports.

“That gives a lot of space for speculation,” Boris Bondarev, who worked for the Russian permanent mission to the United Nations Office in Geneva until he resigned in 2022 in opposition to the Putin War in Ukraine, told ABC News about Russian official statements.

“Western diplomacy says for the first time out what they are going to do, so their opponent is ready,” he added. “The Russians would never do such a thing.”

The absence of confirmation of Kremlin has been interpreted by some in Ukraine as a sign that Putin will not accept to meet Zelenskyy.

A source close to the Ukrainian government, which requested anonymity since they were not authorized to speak publicly, told ABC News that the Ukrainians “continue to be very, very skeptical, that is an underestimation, of Putin and the Russians in terms of whether they will advance.”

“Because the history is that Putin has said ‘no’ for everything,” added the source. “Then, there is skepticism that he will agree with this. But they have done their part correctly. They have said ‘yes’ to everything, they have been constructive, they have shown Trump that they really want to reach peace. And again, they feel that Trump sees him and understands.”

Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament and president of the Body Foreign Affairs Committee, told ABC News: “I doubt that Putin accepts to meet with Zelenskyy,”

“Putin is afraid of Zelenskyy,” he added. “Understand that the image will look like an old dictator, a war criminal, on the one hand, and a young and brave democratic war leader on the other hand.”

“To avoid a trilateral meeting, Putin will file different absurd demands,” said Merezhko. “I could insist on the elections in Ukraine or something. Most likely, it is the diplomacy of ferries at the level of foreign ministers.”

The source close to the government said there are many difficulties.

“It could be that perhaps we are all wrong and Putin accepts the meeting, but maintains unacceptable demands in terms of what security guarantees they are,” they said.

“There are so many non -potential Russians along the way, even if they satisfy Trump with this meeting,” they added.

Oleg Ignatov, senior analyst of the group of experts from the crisis group for Russia, told ABC News that he believes that a meeting between the two leaders is possible, but that it will not be easy to achieve.

“I don’t think it’s a problem for Putin,” said Ignatov.

“He said that Zelenskyy, from his point of view, is not a legitimate leader,” Ignatov continued. “It does not mean that they cannot negotiate with Zelenskyy. The problem could be to sign any document.”

The proposed meeting does not even have a location. Among the possible places promoted so far are Switzerland, suggested by French president Emmanuel Macron, and the Hungarian capital Budapest, suggested by Foreign Minister Hungarian Peter Szijjarto. According to reports, Putin even offered Moscow as a place.

If a meeting continues, the location will be subject to the main logistics and security preparations, while diplomatic teams work on strategy and documents to underpin the negotiations.

“With normal preparations, we talk about months,” said Ignatov. “We are not in a normal situation. Maybe if Trump pushes, [Putin] You may agree, but it doesn’t mean they succeed. “

The abyss between the Ukrainian and Russian camps in key issues, a premium among them territorial questions and the form of Western Security guarantees for Ukraine, remains.

The peace memoranda written by kyiv and Moscow earlier this year “are too different, and we have not seen any other texts,” said Ignatov.

Putin’s 2021 rule, “on the historical unity of the Russians and the Ukrainians,” established the ideological foundations of his war in Ukraine.

The country, he said, is an “artificial” nation, with its people separated by the force of the collective descendants of the first Eastern Slavic state, the Kyivan Rus of the end of the ninth century, by internal radicals and a foreign interference. Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, Putin said, together they form a single “triune nation.”

Despite all the apparent evasiveness of Kremlin, Putin’s position in Ukraine has not changed, Bondarev said. “They say we want Ukraine, and they are consistent with this,” he explained.

The narration of the current war has already changed dramatically, Bondarev continued. American officials no longer speak of supporting Ukraine “during the time that is necessary,” he said, do not defend their commitment to Ukrainian territorial integrity according to their 1991 borders internationally recognized or its eventual adhesion to NATO.

Before his meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday, for example, Trump posted on social networks explicitly discarding the NATO membership for Ukraine and suggesting that kyiv abandons any hope of recovering Crimea. The president has also suggested that he could move away from the peace efforts if he cannot make an advance.

Despite their staunch support for kyiv, European leaders also distrust the president, while defending the demands of Ukraine of Alto El Fuego, security guarantees and their territorial integrity.

If Putin commits a meeting, many would see him as “more than an escalation,” Pavel Luzin, Russian political analyst at the Fletcher Law Faculty and Diplomacy at the University of Tuftts, told ABC.

“There would be a great ideological challenge for all Russian leadership,” said Luzin. “Negan that Ukraine is an enemy equal to them: they still call the armed forces of the ‘Nazi formations’ of Ukraine, ‘combatants’, etc., and they cannot agree that Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state.”

In 2019, Luzin said: “The Russian delegation was sure that Zelenskyy would sign a kind of final Ukrainian capitulation. If they met in 2025 and Ukraine would not be chapter, that would damage the entire ideological framework of modern Russia.”

Bondarev coincided. A face -to -face meeting that ends without a Ukrainian surrender “will be a humiliation” for Putin, he said: “Because he met with someone who is seen by all his people as someone lower and lost, because he could not press Zelenskyy in the capitulation.”

While the Russian leader does not want to unnecessarily antagonize Trump, Bondarev added: “He does not want to negotiate with Zelenskyy, because Zelenskyy is not the same for him.”

Ukraine and his western sponsors have been a vociferous by going back in Putin’s narrative, although Trump has sometimes worried to kyiv and European leaders by aligning with the Russian conversation points that throw doubts about the legitimacy of Zelenskyy.

“Putin’s narrative about Ukraine as an artificial country and the indicator of Western countries means that it makes no sense to speak with Zelenskyy or any other Ukrainian representative,” Bondarev said.

“It would mean that Zelenskyy or the Ukrainian government have their agency, and can decide.”