A day later than expected, Russian and Ukrainian delegations met face-to-face in Istanbul yesterday for the first time in more than three years.
But even before the talks took place, there were doubts over how much real progress could be achieved.
Any hopes for a significant breakthrough were quickly deflated when Russia announced late on Wednesday night that it would send a team of deputy ministers led by former Russian culture minister Vladimir Medinsky.
Russian President Vladimir Putin - the man who called for the talks in the first place as a way of side-stepping a European ultimatum for Moscow to agree to an unconditional ceasefire - had no plans to travel to Istanbul.
Sending Mr Medinsky was "like a slap in the face to the Americans that Russia will not budge", Peter Dickinson, editor of the Atlantic Council's Ukraine Alert, told RTÉ News.
With Russia not sending its high-ranking ministers, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Ankara, along with his foreign and defence ministers to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had to make a snap decision about who to send to Istanbul.
Sending a whole team of senior ministers to parley with Russia's B-team would make Kyiv look foolish.
Instead, he opted to send his Defence Minister Rustem Umerov to lead the delegation, "a sign that Ukraine is taking these talks seriously", said Mr Dickinson.
Zelensky challenges Putin to meet him
The Ukrainian president had, as early as last Monday, challenged Mr Putin to meet him for face-to-face talks in Istanbul.
But in a case of classic Kremlin subterfuge, Mr Zelensky and the world was left waiting for three days for a response.
When that response came, it was clear that Russia was paying mere lip service to US demands for both sides to engage in peace talks.
"Medinsky is basically a Ukrainophobe. From his writings, he believes that Ukraine is not a nation"
By sending Mr Medinsky to lead the Russian delegation, Moscow was again signalling that it views these talks as a continuation of the last direct talks in March 2022.
Mr Medinsky confirmed this to be the case when he spoke to press on Thursday, saying that his team's task was to "achieve long-term peace by eliminating the basic root causes of the conflict".
The former culture minister led Russia's delegation during the failed March 2022 talks. They broke down because Russia's demands amounted to, what in effect, would have been a Ukrainian capitulation.
"Medinsky is basically a Ukrainophobe. From his writings, he believes that Ukraine is not a nation," said Witold Rodkiewicz, a Polish expert on Russian foreign policy at Warsaw's Centre for Eastern Studies.
Russia's core demands remain the same today as they did in March 2022: Ukraine’s demilitarisation (which would render it defenceless), for Ukraine to recognise Russia's annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory and for Ukraine to become a neutral state, ditching its NATO ambitions.
But yesterday, Russia's delegation went a step further, according to one Ukrainian diplomatic source quoted by the Reuters news agency.
Russia made 'unacceptable remands' - Ukraine source
Russia, said the source, made "unacceptable demands" for Ukraine to give up more territory than Russia currently occupies.
That echoes a demand that Mr Putin made last year to annex the entirety of four eastern Ukrainian regions.
Ukraine's priority remains to secure a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, a US proposal that Kyiv agreed to back in March and that the Europeans support. The idea being that one month would allow enough time to conduct thorough negotiations on security guarantees and the role of a European peace monitoring force.
Russia has rejected the US ceasefire proposal on numerous occasions and opposes European peacekeepers having a role in Ukraine as part of a settlement.
Only a week ago, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the UK, during their meeting with Mr Zelensky in Kyiv, delivered Russia an ultimatum to agree to an unconditional ceasefire by Monday or face new sanctions.
But Mr Putin torpedoed that ultimatum, by offering direct talks in Istanbul, which US President Donald Trump welcomed and urged Mr Zelensky to accept immediately.
Mr Rodkiewicz said Washington's acceptance of Moscow's idea for talks "completely compromised" the European position.
Any hope for a substantial breakthrough in Istanbul was dealt a final blow by Mr Trump on Thursday evening when he told reporters on Air Force One that progress would only be made when he and Mr Putin meet.
Developments from 90-minute meeting
However, there were a few developments from yesterday's 90-minute meeting in Istanbul.
Firstly, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan, whose country acted as mediator, said both sides have agreed to share their conditions for reaching a ceasefire.
Mr Fidan's statement at the start of the talks that a ceasefire is critical also helps Ukraine's case, but means little without the US putting any real economic pressure on Russia to agree to a ceasefire.
Secondly, Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners in the coming days, which would be the largest prisoner swap of the war.
Thirdly, Russia has also noted a request from Ukraine for direct talks between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky. Whether the Kremlin will consider the request is another matter.
Mr Medinsky said his team was "ready to continue contacts".
It was by no means a breakthrough, but a key step towards further technical talks.
What is abundantly clear from this week's diplomatic subterfuge from the Kremlin is that it is not yet interested in, or sufficiently pressured enough, to engage in high-level talks with Ukraine.
Moscow's priority is to negotiate the core issues, or the "root causes" as it calls it, with the US, separate from Ukraine and the Europeans.
"On the Russian side, these talks are a sign that they do not perceive Ukraine as a subject, but as an object of negotiation, something to talk about, but not to talk with," said Oleksandr Kraiev, a Ukrainian foreign policy expert at the Ukrainian Prism thinktank in Kyiv.
This approach from Moscow, he said, started in 2015 during the Minsk-II talks between Russia and Ukraine, brokered at the time by France and Germany to reach a settlement over Russia's proxy war in Donetsk and Luhansk.
Pro-Russian separatists, backed by Moscow, broke the Minsk-II truce within hours of it being signed.
"Russia wants to detach the issue of normalisation with the Trump administration from the Russia-Ukraine war settlement."
The subterfuge by Russia and its continued refusal to entertain a ceasefire has exacerbated the patience of European leaders, particularly those who travelled to Kyiv last weekend and stood in solidarity with Mr Zelensky.
Another heavy package of EU and UK sanctions against Russia is on the cards but its impact will be reduced if the US continues to allow Russia to set the agenda for talks, as it has been doing.
After yesterday in Istanbul, Ukraine is pressing for a meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Zelensky, in a bid to pound pressure on the Russian side, but also show to the US that Ukraine is the party that is more committed to peace.
Further talks at technical level between both sides now look likely but it is Mr Trump's comment on Thursday about the need for him to meet Mr Putin that offers a harbinger of the next big step in this process.
The Kremlin has responded in kind, saying Russia wants a Trump-Putin summit, but that it would require a lot of pre-planning. That suggests any meeting won't happen in the coming weeks.
"Russia wants to detach the issue of normalisation with the Trump administration from the Russia-Ukraine war settlement," said Mr Rodkiewicz.
"What Putin did on Sunday was to impose his own agenda and completely deflect the direction that the Europeans and Trump wanted this to go."
