Russia and Ukraine announced that they had agreed at today's peace talks to exchange more prisoners of war and return the bodies of a total of 12,000 killed soldiers, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
The warring parties talked for less than an hour in Istanbul at the second such meeting since March 2022. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the meeting was great and that he hoped to bring together Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a meeting in Turkey with US President Donald Trump.
In the end, however, there was no breakthrough on the ceasefire proposal, which Ukraine, its European allies and Washington are urging Russia to accept. Moscow says it wants a long-term solution, not a pause in the war. Kiev says Putin has no interest in peace.
Kremlin adviser Vladimir Medinsky said Russian negotiators had handed their Ukrainian counterparts a detailed memorandum outlining Moscow's conditions for a comprehensive ceasefire. Medinsky, who heads the Russian team, said Moscow had also proposed "a specific ceasefire for a period of two to three days in some sectors of the front" so that the bodies of killed soldiers could be collected.
Each side said it would hand over the bodies of 6,000 killed soldiers to the other. They will also carry out another major prisoner exchange, after 1,000 prisoners from each side were exchanged following the first round of talks in Istanbul on May 15.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led Kiev's delegation, said the new exchange would focus on the seriously wounded and young people. Umerov also said that Moscow had handed Ukraine a draft peace agreement and that Kiev - which has drawn up its own version - will assess the Russian document.
Ukraine has proposed holding more talks before the end of June, but believes that only a meeting between Zelensky and Putin can resolve the many contentious issues, Umerov said.
Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said that the Kiev delegation had requested the return of a number of children who he said had been deported to Russia.
Moscow claims that the children were moved to protect them from the fighting. Medinsky said Ukraine had 339 names on its list, but the children had been "rescued" rather than abducted.
A day earlier, Ukraine carried out one of its most ambitious attacks since the start of the war, using drones in Siberia and elsewhere to target nuclear-capable Russian long-range bombers.
Angry military bloggers called on Moscow to retaliate forcefully. Both sides, for different reasons, want to keep Trump engaged in the peace process, but expectations for a breakthrough were low today, Reuters reported. Ukraine sees Russia's approach so far as an attempt to force it to capitulate – something Kiev says it will never do, and Moscow, which advanced on the battlefield in May at its fastest pace in six months, says Kiev must accept Russian peace terms or lose more territory.
Putin outlined his initial conditions for an immediate end to the war last June: Ukraine must abandon its ambitions to join NATO and withdraw its troops from all four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims and controls in large part.
Under Ukraine’s proposed roadmap, Kiev wants no limits on its military power after any peace deal, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine seized by Moscow’s forces, and reparations.
Russia currently controls just under a fifth of Ukraine, or about 113,100 square kilometers. Putin sent his army into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.
The United States, which under President Joe Biden was Ukraine's main source of modern weapons, says 1.2 million people have been killed or wounded in the conflict since 2022. Trump has called Putin "crazy" and sparred with Zelensky publicly in the Oval Office, but the US president has also said he believes peace is an achievable goal and that if Putin delays, the US could impose tough sanctions on Russia.