German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said that a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to take place within the next two weeks.
Merz made the comments after he, along with other European leaders, met with Donald Trump at the White House for talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
It’s more likely that they’ll meet than any meeting changing either man’s mind about what is to happen regarding territory and the “special military exercise”.
Zelenskyy (and any replacement who isn’t pro-Russia) won’t quit unless Putin gives up and takes all his troops home and Putin won’t quit until the whole of Ukraine is part of Russia like it was in the Soviet era.
Putin’s whole “I only want the 10% where my troops currently are” is a bluff. If he gets that he won’t stop, or else he would have stopped with Crimea in 2014. He might stop for a short while to make everyone else think he’s stopped, and he might even take the opportunity to gloat “See! I stopped!”. And then he’ll find some other excuse to start again in a few months.
The only hope here lies with the fact that Putin is an old man and this whole thing might be something only he wants. But given the fact he hasn’t fallen out of a window yet, that’s a very slim hope indeed.
Simply meeting would display that the UA government is considered legitimate by Russia.
Putin can either lose face by attending, or lose goodwill with Trump by denying the photo op to him.