It’s the Trump era and Putin knows how to exploit it | World News

So is this the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning or just a bit of pointless pantomime? Or might it be all of them, depending on your point of view?

On the one hand, Ukraine’s leader has turned up for peace talks in Turkey with a strong backroom team and a desire to negotiate over the war.

From his perspective, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the bluff of Vladimir Putin.

“You said you wanted to talk, so here I am,” is the message.

But Mr Putin is, for the moment at least, nowhere to be seen, and neither are the members of his very top team.

No Sergei Lavrov, for instance, the foreign minister who has sourly dismissed these negotiations as being blighted by “Western puppeteers” controlling Mr Zelenskyy, who he described as “a pathetic person”.

So is that bluster a sign of absolute genuine contempt, or a negotiating tactic? Probably both.

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Normally international diplomacy is rather beautifully choreographed.

Leaders meet, talk and shake hands while their lieutenants and advisers circulate and advise.

Planes are filmed landing and taking off; there’s a grip and grin photo and press releases about useful conversations.

But here, everything is mixed up.

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We are, as former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld might have observed, awash in the world of both known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

So Mr Zelenskyy was in Ankara, along with his host, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – a leader who somehow manages to be friends with both Mr Zelenskyy and Mr Putin.

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A five-hour drive away, there was a Russian delegation in Istanbul, twiddling their thumbs with nobody to talk to.

Mr Zelenskyy said they were mere window-dressing; the delegation’s leaders insisted they had the authority to negotiate on behalf of Russia.

And then there is the spectre of the Americans – much talked-about here, but not so far seen. Steve Witkoff, the property mogul who has now been reborn as America’s uber-diplomat, might be coming. Nobody is quite sure, though.

So who benefits from this blend of uncertainty and chaos?

Possibly Mr Zelenskyy, who looks like the grown-up leader who was prepared to take a risk.

But perhaps also Mr Putin, who basically trolled Mr Zelenskyy by sending a B Team as an insult and has now pushed the Americans into stating, repeatedly, that a summit meeting between Donald Trump and Mr Putin is the only way forward.

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In other words, by not turning up for these talks, Mr Putin seems to have secured himself future negotiations that expressly exclude Mr Zelenskyy but do include an American president who seems happy to hand over Ukrainian territory to Moscow in order to end a war being conducted thousands of miles from his own country.

It is the Trump era. And Mr Putin, more than most, doesn’t just know that fact, but seems to know how to exploit it.