President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s phone calls – albeit separately – with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Jan. 5 once again accentuated the key role being played by Türkiye to ensure a permanent cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia. His delicately balanced act of assuming the role of a trustworthy mediator by keeping communication channels with both warring countries open provides a glimmer of hope to find a solution and achieve peace in the Ukraine crisis in the coming days.

There is little doubt that, despite the series of botched and half-cooked efforts by other European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who in the initial phase of the Ukraine war passionately tried to carve out a role of an "influential mediator" for himself, President Erdoğan has outshined other global leaders by successfully mediating, alongside the United Nations, three important agreements between the two warring sides, namely, the grain deal, the prisoner exchange and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine's south. Thursday’s phone calls and the responses of Putin and Zelenskyy suggest that both have reached the exhaustive stage of the war and need some respite – if not a permanent cease-fire – at the moment. If assessed with their New Year's speeches and the tones of their subsequent phone calls with Erdoğan within the past five days, an optimistic scenario seems to be emerging. Part of the credit should be given to Erdoğan’s incessant personal efforts to bring about some kind of cease-fire in this high-flame hot spot that has seriously threatened the global economy and security fabric. In his discussions, despite his intention to convince his Russian counterpart to mollify his stance, President Erdogan did not budge from Türkiye’s principled stand on the Ukraine issue and conveyed his position that a unilateral cease-fire is a prerequisite to moving forward toward any peace deal. This is a great example of an amalgam of "blunt but adaptive" diplomacy, a signature diplomacy style now associated with him that has earned him many successes in his role as the most prominent mediator in the global arena in recent years.

Putin's desire for dialogue

In his call with Erdoğan, Putin showed his eagerness for a dialogue on the Ukraine imbroglio, but he insisted that Kyiv must fulfill the previously announced requirements and take into account "new territorial realities." Two inferences can be drawn from this. One, Putin is now seriously feeling the burden of military and financial losses and wants some kind of breather in the ongoing war through a temporary cease-fire, and two, he is not going to relinquish any of the occupied territories as a concession to start any negotiation. This is exactly in line with his New Year's speech to his country. Both Putin and Zelenskyy made much anticipated New Year's speeches, but with very different content. Putin tried to evoke Russian nationalism and the importance of national duty, while Zelenskyy’s speech was a blend of anguish and gratitude. Over the past few months, Zelenskyy, a media-savvy leader, has also emerged as an astute marketer when it comes to branding the Ukraine invasion through his verbal and nonverbal communication. He has been consistently using his attire – khaki sweatshirt, cargo pants and combat boots – to consciously brand himself as a wartime leader and to keep reminding the world about the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

"We were told: You have no other option but to surrender. We say: We have no other option than to win. We fight as one team – the whole country, all our regions. I admire you all," Zelenskyy said in his 17-minute video message, dressed in his trademark olive green fatigues.

Freshly emboldened by his enlightening trip to Washington last month, where he was showered with generous commitments of continuous financial and military assistance as well as the coveted Patriot system to counter the aerial attacks by the Russian air force, Zelenskyy appeared much more confident in his speech. He made an aggressive effort to emotionally charge his audience by also showing footage of Russian attacks and the resistance exhibited by the Ukrainians. Clearly, Zelenskyy, for the very first time since the Russian invasion started last February, appeared to be speaking from the position of strength. Though he desisted from showing as much eagerness as Putin for talks in his call with President Erdoğan, the reality is that Zelenskyy also wants to engage in some sort of communication thread with Putin through the Ankara route.

Putin, on the contrary, in a direct effort to bolster his dwindling popularity among the Russian people amid recent battlefield setbacks and growing internal criticism of his military strategy, broke with tradition by delivering a New Year's speech flanked by troops rather than walls of his Kremlin office. Putin, as expected, was quite stern and straightforward in his message about 2022 as the year that "clearly separated courage and heroism from betrayal and cowardice."

"Defense of the fatherland is our sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants. Moral and historical righteousness is on our side ... We have always known, and today we are again convinced that the sovereign, independent, secure future of Russia depends only on us, on our strength and will," he added.

Vulnerability of Moscow

Putin's attempt to evoke nationalism in this way to rally support for his Ukraine adventure has revealed two things: the vulnerability of Russia's military power in a prolonged war as well as his own vulnerability as Russia's undisputed leader.

Apparently, both things are at stake now. Russian ground forces, owing to the innumerable logistical constraints and outdated military infrastructure, have been facing a paralytic halt since April 2022. They have had to vacate some of the occupied territories recently in view of the stubborn resistance from the Ukrainian forces. For many months, Russian troops have not been able to move forward and capture more Ukrainian territories and they are unable to even manage the occupied portion properly. The Makiivka attack, which killed 89 Russian soldiers (while Ukraine claims the toll was 400), is the latest episode that has further reinforced the perception that the Ukrainian forces are holding their own against the Russians.

The recent shift of Putin to aerial attacks is an indication that he has lost confidence in the capability of his ground forces and now he is trying to use air force to destroy the energy and communication infrastructures deep inside Ukraine. His current strategy is simple: don’t move ground forces forward, consolidate positions in the captured areas and create panic in Ukraine by targeting cities and towns through aerial attacks.

At the same time, there is a surge in Putin’s diplomatic undertakings in the last few weeks – including a meeting with Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk, along with a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping through video link and now a phone call with President Erdoğan. All this diplomatic activism being shown by Putin has two clear-cut objectives: First, he is desperate to neutralize the impact of Zelenskyy’s daily ritual of talking to global leaders to keep alive the flame of sympathy toward the Ukrainians, and second, he feels that, after series of military setbacks, Russia needs to also engage Kyiv through a mutually "acceptable" mediator –Türkiye is perhaps the most suitable candidate for this role – in indirect talks so as to gain some time and divert attention from the Russian military’s continuous fiascos in Ukraine.

Furthermore, Putin wants to involve Erdoğan, who has successfully mediated the grain deal and salvaged it many times and then renewed it, in some kind of mediation with Zelenskyy to test the bargaining position of the Ukraine government before starting a new phase of his "special military operation" in Ukraine. The supply of the Patriot system will certainly bolster the Ukrainian defense against Russian aerial attacks. Though Putin has claimed that Moscow has an antidote to the "quite old" Patriot system, the fact is that the Patriot system will provide a reasonably effective deterrence against Russian aerial power.

Erdoğan enjoys a very good rapport with Putin and Zelenskyy as well as other global leaders, which puts him in a much better position to play a role in finding some sort of – although temporary – de-escalation in the Ukraine war. This may prove to be the first step toward a lasting solution to this issue that is threatening global security and peace. Even a temporary pause in the Ukraine war may provide opportunities to build a comprehensive deal. Though it is too early to predict the results of Erdoğan’s mediatory efforts, one thing is certain: both Putin and Zelenskyy, for their own reasons, also want to move toward the negation table – raising hopes for some positive news in the coming days.