Is the meeting between Ukraine and Russia a step forward or a political show?

The proposed meeting on Monday comes after a flurry of claims from the Kremlin, which claimed earlier that Ukraine had countered Russia's request to meet in Belarus with a proposal to meet in Warsaw, then abandoned communication. The office of Zelensky disputed that they refused to negotiate.

Feb 28, 2022 - 12:24 Updated: Feb 28, 2022 - 13:38

Is the meeting between Ukraine and Russia a step forward or a political show?

A meeting between Russia and Ukraine is scheduled for Monday near the Pripyat River on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.

Is this a diplomatic breakthrough or a political gimmick as Russia presses its onslaught in Ukraine?
Let's start with what this isn't: The meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be a summit.

Instead, it'll be a meeting of both sides' delegates. According to Zelensky's office, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday and promised to keep all planes, helicopters, and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation's travel, meeting, and return.
Can Ukraine, on the other hand, accept any pledges from Lukashenko? Last year, under the guise of a "security warning," Belarusian officials forced down a Ryanair flight over Belarusian airspace and arrested a young Belarusian dissident, provoking international outrage.

The proposed meeting on Monday comes after a flurry of claims from the Kremlin, which claimed earlier that Ukraine had countered Russia's request to meet in Belarus with a proposal to meet in Warsaw, then abandoned communication. The office of Zelensky disputed that they refused to negotiate.

Continuing a military offensive while dangling the prospect of a diplomatic track is reminiscent of the so-called "Astana process," which took place in Kazakhstan's capital in 2017, and was brokered in part by Russia to help the Syrian opposition and officials representing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad negotiate.

Iran and Turkey, who backed opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, also helped broker those talks, but some observers saw them as an effort by Russia to create a diplomatic track that Moscow could steer, even as Russian warplanes continued to pound Assad's enemies.

Zelensky himself on Sunday set low expectations for the meeting, and it is tempting to guess that the meeting on the border will yield little. But it does offer Putin at least some potential room for an exit from the war in Ukraine if his troops continue to encounter battlefield setbacks against Ukrainian forces.

Putin's offensive is still in its very early days, and Russia can commit more combat power to Ukraine. Quite ominously, Ramzan Kadyrov, the pro-Kremlin leader of Russia's Chechnya region, called on the Russian military Sunday to expand its offensive in Ukraine.

"The time has come to make a concrete decision and start a large-scale operation in all directions and territories of Ukraine," Kadyrov said in a statement on his Telegram account. "I have repeatedly developed tactics and strategies against terrorists, participated in battles. In my understanding, the tactics chosen in Ukraine are too slow. It lasts a long time and, in my view, is not effective."

That's a frightening sentiment from a man who runs Chechnya as his fiefdom and has been accused by international and independent observers of gross human rights violations in his home republic and beyond.

It was also a particularly chilling statement to hear on February 27, the seventh anniversary of the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in 2015.

On Sunday, a crowd came to leave flowers on the central Moscow bridge where Nemtsov was shot, just a short distance from the Kremlin wall.
The yearly commemoration of Nemtsov's killing takes place in the Russian capital, but this year's event was a subdued anti-war protest: Many individuals brought flowers in the colors of the Ukrainian flag, blue and gold, as well as letters stating "No to war" and "Don't shoot."

Nemtsov was a strong critic of Putin's handling of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, and he was examining Russian forces' involvement in major battles in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region at the time of his death when the Kremlin was still denying it sent troops there.
Their presence, along with a bigger war enveloping Ukraine, is now in the open.