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Mediation offers multiplied as the war entered its second week
Summary
A look back at the diplomatic activity around Ukraine on 7 March 2022, as ceasefire proposals competed with threats and military strikes.
What did diplomacy look like on 7 March 2022, the twelfth day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? The picture was one of many channels opening at once, while the fighting and the warnings continued alongside them.
A first Cabinet-level meeting
On 7 March 2022 it was announced that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba would meet Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in Ankara on Thursday. It would be the first Cabinet-level meeting between Russia and Ukraine since the invasion began.
The announcement followed a phone call on 6 March in which Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on Russian president Vladimir Putin to declare a ceasefire. According to the report, Putin said he was ready for dialogue to end the war, but warned that any attempt to draw out negotiations could fail. He also called for Ukraine to cease fighting so that the military campaign could end.
Other mediators
Turkey was not alone. On 5 March, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met Putin in Moscow to discuss the invasion and a potential ceasefire. He was the first world leader to meet Putin in person since the invasion began. The next day Bennett said Israel would try to mediate a ceasefire even if the attempts were not successful. Also on 5 March, Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Minister Ruslan Kazakbayev expressed support for any efforts to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.
France was another channel. In a call with French president Emmanuel Macron on 6 March, Putin said Russia would no longer attack nuclear power plants and was open to a trilateral meeting between Russia, Ukraine and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Warnings alongside the talks
The conciliatory signals came with hard language. On 5 March Putin said Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war, and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine could have catastrophic consequences for the world. He also said that around 13,000 to 14,000 people had been killed in Donbas since 2014.
On 5 March Putin also signed a decree authorising debts owed to creditors from "unfriendly countries" to be settled in rubles rather than foreign currencies, at the exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Russia. The list of such countries was to be determined within two days.
The war itself went on. On 6 March Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Havryshivka Vinnytsia International Airport in Vinnytsia Oblast had been completely destroyed by eight Russian ballistic missiles.
NATO's flank
The same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán signed a decree allowing NATO troops to be deployed in western Hungary and lethal weapons to be transferred across its territory to other NATO member states. The decree did not, however, allow weapons shipments across Hungarian territory to Ukraine.
What the day showed
Taken together, the reports from 5 to 7 March 2022 show several governments positioning themselves as intermediaries, a planned meeting of the two countries' foreign ministers, and a Russian leader who said he was open to dialogue while setting conditions and issuing warnings. Hungary's decree showed a member state supporting NATO deployments and transfers to allies while stopping short of shipments to Ukraine. Whether the planned Ankara meeting would change anything on the ground was not something the day's reports could settle.
