- Second round of direct conversations in Türkiye.
- The positions of Russia and Ukraine are still very separate.
- Both parties agree a new exchange of prisoners.
Peace conversations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul ended just an hour after they began on Monday, one day after a massive Ukrainian drone attack against strategic bombers with nuclear capacity in Russia.
The conversations, the second direct contacts between the sides since 2022, had already begun almost two hours later than scheduled, without explanation of the delay.
Although the atmosphere was subjected and the brief dialogue, the conversations gave an agreement to carry out a new exchange of prisoners and Ukraine said that another round of conversations was on the agenda.
In Russia, before the conversations began, the Bloggers of the Angry War had asked Moscow to deliver a fearsome retaliation coup against kyiv after Ukraine launched one of their most ambitious attacks in the war on Sunday, pointing to Russian nuclear long -range bombers in Siberia and in other places.
Ukraine and Russia have emitted clearly different evaluations of the damage caused to the Russian strategic bombers fleet, a key element in its nuclear arsenal, but from the satellite images available in public had suffered some serious equipment losses.
“The eyes of the entire world focus on the contacts here,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, he had told Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the beginning of the conversations while they faced each other on the opposite sides of the room in the sumptuous Palace Ciragan through the Bosphorus.
He said that the objective of the meeting was to evaluate the conditions of a high fire, discuss a possible meeting between Russian and Ukrainian presidents, and look at more prisoner exchange opportunities.
The Ukraine Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the kyiv delegation, announced after the conversations that a new prisoner exchange was agreed to monitor the greatest swap of prisoners of the war in the last round of conversations.
He said the new exchange would focus on the seriously injured in war and young people.
Umerov also said that Moscow had delivered its own eraser in peace agreement to Ukraine and that kyiv, which has written its own version, would review the Russian document.
Ukraine has proposed to maintain more conversations before the end of June, but believes that only a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin can solve the many containment problems, Umerov said.
Zelenskiy’s Cabinet Chief Andriy Yermak said that Kyiv’s delegation had delivered a list of children who, he said, had been deported to Russia and wanted to return. Moscow says such children were transferred to protect them from the fight.
The two parties were expected to discuss their respective and very different ideas for what a full fire and a long -term path towards peace should seem in the midst of the pressure of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has said that the United States could abandon its role as a mediator if there is no progress.
But Umerov said that kyiv had not been able to react to Russia’s proposals for peace because he had only seen them on Monday.
Low expectations
While both countries, for different reasons, are interested in keeping Trump involved in the peace process, the expectations of an advance on Monday had been low.
Ukraine considers Russia’s approach to date as an attempt to force him to capitulate, something that kyiv says he will never do, while Moscow, which advanced on the battlefield in May at its fastest rate in six months, says that kyiv should undergo peace in Russian terms or that face the loss of more territory.
Putin established its initial terms for an immediate end of the war last June: Ukraine must abandon its NATO ambitions and withdraw all its troops from the entire territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mainly controlled by Russia.
According to a proposed roadmap extracted by Ukraine, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, kyiv does not want restrictions on his military force after any peace agreement, or international recognition of Russian sovereignty on parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces and wants repairs.
Russia currently controls just under a fifth of Ukraine, or around 113,100 square km, approximately the same size as the American state of Ohio.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine on February 24, 2022, after eight years of struggle in eastern Ukraine between the separatists backed by Russian and the Ukrainian forces.
The United States says that more than 1.2 million people have been killed and wounded in the war since 2022.
Trump called Putin “crazy” and rebuked Zelenskiy in public in the Oval office, but the president of the United States also said that he believes that peace is attainable and that if Putin is delayed, then he could impose difficult sanctions on Russia.
