How seriously will Putin take Ukraine negotiations?

We have no idea whether Vladimir Putin is serious about peace negotiations with Ukraine. He may simply be going through the motions while enjoying the spectacle of the West engaging in mutual recrimination and performative outrage, or he may genuinely feel there are grounds for some kind of agreement. More likely, given his track record as a tactician rather than a strategist, he is simply seeing what opportunities emerge.

Nonetheless, his choices of format, venue and representatives may give us some sense of his intentions. His lead negotiator at abortive talks in Istanbul in 2022, for example, was Vladimir Medinsky. A former minister of culture, his main claim to fame was as an outspoken champion of ‘patriotic’ culture, funnelling money to everything from history textbooks to action films that portrayed a gung-ho, nationalistic perspective on Russia’s past. As such, he was regarded by many as an essentially lightweight, cartoonish figure. This was probably unfair, as it likely was simply that in those talks Putin wanted a loyal factotum rather than the kind of serious operator who might have his (or her) own ideas as to how to handle the talks.