The first round of direct talks on May 16 also ended without a breakthrough, but the two sides agreed on a prisoner swap.
“We’ve actually had exchanges of prisoners throughout this war, not in the numbers that have been happening as a result of these Istanbul talks,” Medvedenko added.
“The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the talks.
However, Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, told Al Jazeera he was not very optimistic about the talks in Istanbul.
Trump ready to join Putin, Zelenskyy Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the talks “magnificent”.
Despite the lack of progress in ending the war, direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul resulted in the return of thousands of dead soldiers and a new prisoner swap.
Both sides will exchange prisoners of war and the remains of 6,000 soldiers killed in battle, officials confirmed during the meeting between the opposing delegations on Monday at the Turkish city’s Ottoman-era Ciragan Palace.
Less than two hours into the meeting, the warring nations met for direct talks for the second time in less than a month in Istanbul, but amid recent military escalation on both sides, expectations were low.
Though the two sides agreed on a prisoner swap, the first round of direct talks on May 16 also ended without a breakthrough.
Al Jazeera correspondent Dmitry Medvedenko, reporting from Istanbul, stated that the prisoner exchange appears to be the diplomatic avenue that truly facilitates communication between Russia and Ukraine.
“This war has actually seen prisoner exchanges, but not to the extent that these Istanbul talks have been able to,” Medvedenko continued.
exchange of prisoners.
Both countries’ negotiators confirmed that they had agreed to exchange all fighters under 25 who were captured and all soldiers who were seriously injured.
“We decided to swap severely ill and injured POWs completely for one another. Rustem Umerov, the defense minister and chief negotiator for Ukraine, told reporters in Istanbul that the second group is young soldiers between the ages of 18 and 25.
Vladimir Medinsky, the chief negotiator for Russia, stated that the exchange would include “at least 1,000” POWs on both sides, in addition to the 1,000 for 1,000 exchange that was decided upon during negotiations in May.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was speaking from Vilnius, Lithuania, the two sides “exchanged documents through the Turkish side,” and Kyiv was getting ready to release the next batch of prisoners.
Additionally, he stated that his negotiators had presented their Russian counterparts with a list of almost 400 kidnapped Ukrainian children that Kyiv wanted Moscow to bring back, but that only ten of them had been agreed to be returned by the Russian delegation.
Does a ceasefire have limitations or is it unconditional?
Russia and Ukraine continue to be deeply divided over a truce.
Following the discussions, Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters, “The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire.”.
For its part, Russia claimed to have provided a brief ceasefire.
According to Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator, “we have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line,” which is necessary to retrieve the bodies of fallen soldiers from battlefields.
Nonetheless, Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksiy Goncharenko told Al Jazeera that he was not particularly hopeful about the negotiations in Istanbul.
“With Ukraine proposing a 30-day ceasefire in March and the United States and Europe proposing the same, only one country [Russia] refused,” Goncharenko said, “Russia clearly shows that they don’t want to end the war.”.
In the meantime, Ukraine has increased its military activity well beyond the front lines, taking credit for drone strikes on Sunday that it said destroyed or seriously damaged over 40 Russian warplanes.
The operation effectively targeted airbases thousands of kilometers away from Ukraine in three far-flung regions: the Far East, Siberia, and the Arctic.
According to Zelenskyy, the military setback would put more pressure on Moscow to resume talks.
Russia’s new “memorandum.”.
The Ukrainian delegation claimed that Russia had brought a memorandum outlining the Kremlin’s conditions for halting hostilities to the negotiating table.
According to Ukraine’s Defense Minister Umerov, Kyiv officials will need a week to examine the document and make a decision.
Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti released the Russian memorandum’s text following the negotiations. It recommended that Ukraine remove its troops from the four Ukrainian territories that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never completely seized as a condition for a ceasefire.
In an alternative approach to a truce, the memorandum calls on Ukraine to freeze Western arms supplies and stop its mobilization efforts, both of which Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously proposed.
As a condition for ending hostilities, the document also recommends that Ukraine prohibit any military presence of third countries on its territory and cease any redeployment of forces.
According to the Russian document, Ukraine should also end martial law and hold elections before the two nations can sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would recognize Russian as the nation’s official language on par with Ukrainian, declare Ukraine neutral, revoke Ukraine’s bid to join NATO, and limit the size of its armed forces.
All of those requests from Moscow have already been turned down by Ukraine and the West.
In anticipation of future negotiations, Ukraine has suggested a date of June 20–30. Zelenskyy has stated time and time again that he is prepared to meet with Putin.
According to former Russian deputy foreign minister Andrey Fedorov, Monday’s negotiations yielded minimal results, and the opposing sides remain divided on important issues.
He told Al Jazeera, “All the main political questions were left unopened.” He also said that although both sides made peace proposals in memorandums, they were “very contradictory to each other.”.
Ready to join Putin and Zelenskyy is Trump.
“Magnificent” is how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the negotiations.
He stated, “It would be my greatest dream to meet Putin and Zelenskyy in Istanbul or Ankara and even invite [US President Donald] Trump to join us.”.
Despite the lack of a confirmed date, Trump and Putin have stated for months that they are excited to meet.
On Monday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump was “open” to meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin at the leader’s level. When asked if he was open to it, Leavitt responded that Trump wants leaders to sit down at the table.
Following his confrontation with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February and his mounting pressure on Ukraine, Trump has recently voiced his growing frustration that Putin might be “tapping me along.”. “”.
On May 15, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that “nothing will happen until Putin and I get together.”.
Trump then called Putin “completely insane” on May 26 after Moscow killed at least 13 people in its biggest aerial assault of the conflict on Ukraine.
Ukraine and its European allies have frequently expressed dismay at Trump’s unpredictable behavior since he returned to the White House in January.
