Will Zelenskyy and Putin speak?

The market is pricing this as a near-certain no, which is understandable given the deep hostility, the lack of trust, and the absence of any obvious public diplomatic track that would lead to a one-on-one encounter. A direct meeting would likely require a major shift in the war’s trajectory, a credible intermediary arrangement, and enough political cover for both leaders to justify sitting down together. Those conditions are hard to assemble, especially on a short timeline, and the default outcome remains that they do not meet.

Even so, the market may be underrating the tail risk of a forced negotiation event. Wars sometimes move abruptly when battlefield dynamics, alliance pressure, domestic politics, or a temporary ceasefire make a leader-level encounter useful or unavoidable. If talks are framed as symbolic, mediated, and tightly controlled, a meeting becomes more plausible than a spontaneous bilateral summit. The key point is that this is not just a question of goodwill; it is a question of whether a strategic inflection point creates enough incentive for both sides to accept a highly constrained interaction.

Compared with the 8% market price, my estimate is somewhat higher because the market appears to be pricing only the baseline probability of normal diplomacy. I think that underweights the possibility of an externally brokered process or a late-stage war-management summit. Still, the overall probability remains low, and the most likely outcome is no meeting before the deadline.