Intermediaries seek diplomatic opening, despite gloom about Putin’s aims in Ukraine

Some officials trying to advance talks between Russia and Ukraine to end the war are seeing positions shift ever so slightly in Moscow and Kyiv, but a huge gap remains to be bridged to stop the bloodshed in a conflict about to enter its third week.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went to Moscow last weekend to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and since then has spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky four times and to Putin twice more, an Israeli official familiar with the talks said.

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“If there are even the smallest glimmers of opportunity in the diplomatic sphere then we should be talking about them and encouraging them,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow and Russia specialist at the Center for a New American Security.

But she said there may not be “a negotiated settlement until there is a perceived stalemate on the battlefield.”

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