Zelensky says he will attend the meeting, but the Kremlin has not yet publicly confirmed it. However, the media is already discussing the location where the talks could take place: Rome, Geneva, Budapest are mentioned. However, the key question is whether a meeting between the two leaders is even possible, since Putin's contempt for the Ukrainian leader is so strong that he almost never mentions his name. The Kremlin claims that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader, and Russian state television calls him a"clown."

"Zelensky should admit his defeat"

According to The New York Times (NYT), for Putin, such a summit could be a way to cement a peace deal that the Kremlin would present as a victory if Donald Trump pressured Zelensky to accept Putin's demands for Ukrainian territory and sovereignty. But it could also pose political risks, as the Kremlin has long made it clear that direct talks with Zelensky would be beneath the Russian leader.

“It would be a compromise,” senior Russian lawmaker Konstantin Zatulin said by phone Tuesday, stressing that a possible meeting between Putin and Zelensky would in itself be a concession by the Kremlin. “Russia would concede to a meeting with Zelensky in order to support President Trump’s peacemaking efforts.”

According to Zatulin, some Russian officials believe that Putin should not meet with Zelensky under any circumstances, given that “Russia is talking everywhere about Zelensky’s illegitimacy.” However, Zatulin believes that a summit with Zelensky should be considered because “the stakes are too high to ignore any possibility of a meeting.”

“I just don’t see any prospects for such a meeting to take place in the near future or even in the near future,” said Grigory Golosov, a political scientist from St. Petersburg, in a telephone interview. He predicted that Putin would meet with Zelensky only “if it becomes clear to Putin that this meeting is necessary for Ukraine to capitulate and for Zelensky to admit defeat.”

At the time, Keir Giles, a senior fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, told NBC News that a meeting between the two leaders would not be"impossible," but it would be a "big surprise."

So far, Putin has carefully avoided meeting with Zelensky, he said in a phone interview,"because it contradicts his narrative that Ukraine is not a real country and Zelensky is not a legitimate leader."

Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, echoed these doubts. The meeting would be “meaningless” for Putin and would not take place “under the current circumstances,” she wrote on the X social network.

Putin"has repeatedly stated that such a meeting would only be possible with well-prepared grounds, which in practice means that Zelensky would have to agree to Russia's conditions for ending the war," she said.

According to the NYT, meeting with Zelensky for another purpose could provoke controversy in Russia. Putin bases his invasion narrative on the false idea that Zelensky leads a “regime” accused of genocide against Russian speakers. Zelensky himself grew up speaking Russian and initially raised hopes in Moscow for a more pro-Russian Ukrainian government when he was elected president in a landslide in 2019.

That would be a"drastic shift in tone"

Still, analysts have noted an unusual surge in Putin's diplomatic activity that suggests he is taking Trump's pressure seriously. The Kremlin said Putin called the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil, India, Tajikistan, South Africa, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Belarus this week to brief their governments on the progress of the Ukraine talks.

Putin “seems to have decided that the time has come for real diplomacy,” Dmitry Trenin, a security policy expert at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, told the NYT. “The outline of the solution that Putin probably discussed with Trump suits him.”

Trenin predicted that Putin would agree to meet with Zelensky if the Kremlin was satisfied with concessions that the Ukrainian president would be willing to accept. However, the analyst added that Putin's far-reaching demands remain on the table, including not only his claims to Ukrainian territory but also his insistence that Ukraine limit the size of its military in the future.

If the meeting takes place, Orysia Lucevich, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, tells CNN, Putin"will have to accept failure and sit down at the table with a president he sees as a laughing stock, from a country that doesn't exist."

Furthermore, she said, it would be a “drastic shift in tone” that would be difficult to explain to the Russian people. “(Putin) has been brainwashing Russians on state television so much that Zelensky is supposedly a Nazi, that (Ukraine) is a puppet state of the West... that Zelensky is illegitimate, why is he suddenly talking to him?”

Not only does the Kremlin constantly question the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leader, emphasizing the postponement of elections (under the conditions of illegal martial law) in Ukraine, but in its latest “peace” memorandum it demands that Ukraine hold elections before signing any final peace treaty. Putin and other Russian officials rarely mention Zelensky by name, preferring to use the caustic term “Kyiv regime.”

And it should be remembered that it was Zelensky who traveled to Turkey in mid-May for the first direct talks between the two countries, when Putin sent a delegation led by the author of history textbooks.

Stanovaya told CNN that while Putin does not view the meeting with Zelensky as particularly important in a war that Russia sees more as a confrontation with the West than with Ukraine, he could still agree to participate if he believes it will be successful.

"The basic demands must be included in the negotiations, and Zelensky must agree to talk about them," she said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday. So far, Zelensky has rejected those basic demands, which include giving up territory still under Ukrainian control. But Putin sees Trump as the"key" to changing that, the analyst said.

"D. Trump is seen as a figure who helps implement the Russian vision of conflict resolution, and therefore the United States should pressure Kyiv to be more flexible, more open to Russian demands."

According to T. Stanovaya, Russia may try to keep the US on its side by doing what J. Ushakov suggested and proposing a new round of talks in Istanbul, but with a higher-level delegation, perhaps with J. Ushakov himself and Foreign Minister S. Lavrov. However, it will not risk an"ambush" - it will not sit down at the negotiating table with V. Zelensky only to have all its demands rejected.

Political scientist Linas Kojala said on Edmundas Jakilaitis' podcast"Politika" that V. Putin likes safe environments and a confrontational meeting with V. Zelensky is definitely not his aspiration.

"Even in a linguistic sense, it wouldn't be convenient for him. Let's look at what happened with Trump - he understands English quite well, I mean Putin, that's obvious, but he speaks through a translator. Even in that situation, he buys himself time, because he speaks Russian himself, which Trump doesn't understand, but Putin probably more or less understands what Trump says even before the translator translates it. Even in this sense, it would be much more difficult for him with Zelensky. Because it's obvious that Zelensky speaks Russian perfectly. It's his native language," said L. Kojala.

So the question arises whether V. Putin would really agree to a meeting that would be open.

"I mean, not the capitulation of Ukraine that is put on the table, which Putin signs and rejoices in victory, but where there is an open discussion, where there are disagreements, and probably more disagreements than agreement on something. Then another thing, I remember my business studies and negotiation classes. We were always told that we need to assess the points of reference - the position of one side, the position of the other side, and then understand that there is a zone where both sides see that they can give in. Where there is an intersection, there is the potential for an agreement. So I'm trying to draw this simple diagram in my head, but I can't seem to draw the lines so far that they intersect. I mean, a possible agreement that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine," the political scientist notes.

Trump ended his day Monday with a post on Truth Social saying he had “begun preparations for a meeting… between President Putin and President Zelensky.” But when he woke up and joined the Fox News breakfast show on Tuesday morning, he apparently realized that nothing had been finalized. “I kind of made a deal with Putin and Zelensky, and you know, they’re the ones who have to make the decisions. We’re 7,000 miles away,” he said.

According to CNN, Putin has no reason to back down at this point. Without offering any concessions, he has been met with a spectacular summit in Alaska, Trump's refusal to demand a ceasefire before peace talks, and the collapse of all sanctions ultimatums so far. Having previously reduced the scale of nighttime drone attacks on Ukrainian cities in August, Russia increased them again on Monday evening, launching 270 drones and 10 missiles. If Trump's pressure on Zelensky has not yet yielded the results Moscow hopes for, military force can always be relied on.

The only unknown for Russia at this time is who Trump will blame if the latest peace efforts fail, CNN summarizes.