Recent weeks have seen discussions, equally intense and controversial, over whether ongoing negotiations
for humanitarian measures – let alone for ending the war that the Russian leader has been waging against
Ukraine – have any chance of success, or whether they are negotiations in name only, doomed to failure.
Given the basic questions raised in this context, we wish to contribute the following considerations – from
the areas of negotiations theory and mediation methodology – to what otherwise has been a primarily polit-
ical, military–strategic and morally oriented public debate