Ukraine, Russia delegations meet, agree to exchange hundreds of POWs
Agreement to conduct biggest prisoner of war exchange was revealed by Ukraine's defence minister
The first direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in more than three years lasted less than two hours, with no apparent sign of progress so far in narrowing the gap between the sides.
The meeting at the Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosphorus marked rare diplomacy between the warring sides, who had not met face to face since March 2022, the month after Russia's full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the delegation from Kyiv, told Ukrainian TV on Friday that the countries had agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war from each side.
While periodic prisoner swaps have occurred since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this would represent the largest yet.
In a short statement shown live on Russian state TV after the negotiations in Istanbul had wrapped up, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia's delegation, said that Moscow was satisfied with progress made and was ready to keep talking to Kyiv.
"The Ukrainian side requested direct talks between the leaders of our states. We have taken note of this request," Medinsky added.
He also confirmed what he described as "a massive thousand-for-thousand prisoner exchange," to take place "in the coming days."
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that Kyiv's top priority was "a full, unconditional and honest ceasefire … to stop the killing and create a solid basis for diplomacy." He said that if Russia refused, it should be hit with strong new sanctions against its energy sector and banks.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan opened the talks, saying the sides faced a stark choice.
"There are two paths ahead of us: one road will take us on a process that will lead to peace, while the other will lead to more destruction and death," said Fidan.
Muted expectations
Expectations for a major breakthrough for the talks had been low and were dented further on Thursday when Trump said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin said that a meeting between Putin and Trump was essential but required considerable advance preparation and had to yield results when it happened.
"Such a meeting is certainly necessary. It is necessary both primarily from the point of view of bilateral Russian-U.S. relations and from the point of view of having a serious conversation at the highest level about international affairs and on regional problems, including, of course, about the crisis over Ukraine," said Peskov.
Peskov also said that the Russian negotiating team in Istanbul was in constant communication with Moscow and that President Putin was receiving real-time updates.
Putin on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Turkey, but spurned a challenge from Zelenskyy to attend.
'War of attrition'
With Russian forces now in control of close to one-fifth of Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country.
Ukraine rejects those terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.
Ukraine repelled Russia's initial assault on the capital, Kyiv, in 2022 and recaptured swaths of land seized by Russians in the war's first year. But Russian forces have slowly advanced for most of the past two years.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been wounded or killed on both sides. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, whole cities have been destroyed and millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes.
Moscow says it was forced to mount its "special military operation" in response to NATO expansion and the prospect that the Western alliance would admit Ukraine as a member and use it as a launchpad to attack Russia. Any settlement of the conflict must address these "root causes," the Kremlin says.
Kyiv and its allies reject that as a false pretext for what they call an imperial-style land grab.
Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's army chief, said late on Thursday that Russia has about 640,000 troops in Ukraine at the moment and had "turned its aggression against Ukraine into a war of attrition."
With files from the Associated Press