A much-awaited meeting between the Ukrainian government delegation and their Russian counterparts, on Monday, ended within an hour and with little progress in negotiating the end to the war that started in 2022.
While agreements were reached on prisoner exchange, there has been no word on talks to potentially end the decades-long conflict.
The slow pace of the talks was attributed to the lackadaisical effort from the Russian delegation that refused to share their agenda with the negotiating teams ahead of the meetings. “We didn’t receive the document until the meeting began. And therefore, we can’t provide any feedback until we have had the chance to study it,” Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, said at the end of the meetings.
Organised under the aegis of the government of Turkiye, this was the second such meeting in Istanbul in the past month, between two warring parties and came less than a day after a large-scale Ukrainian attack on Russian military infrastructure.
Operation Spiderweb
Ukraine claimed that their attack, codenamed ‘Operation Spiderweb‘, targeted over 40 planes, including surveillance and bomber aircraft, across several Russian bases, even as far east as Siberia. The resulting damage is estimated to be in billions of dollars for Russia.
The impact of this intrepidity was undeniable felt at the Çırağan Palace, overlooking the Bosphorus sea, in Istanbul, as interactions between the rival delegations remained tense.
“The war goes on,” an official from the Ukrainian embassy in Turkiye said when asked about the drone attack. “Ukraine had proposed a ceasefire on March 11. And if Russia agreed to it, I guess their planes would be intact right now,” he said, adding that the Russians remained deterrent to the idea of pausing conflicts.
In fact, a “full and unconditional ceasefire on land, at sea and in the air” remained a key demand and central to the Ukrainian agenda. “The ceasefire is a basis for future talks of substance. We really can talk only when the weapons are silent,” Mr. Umerov said. “Russia tries to get us into the dialogue on substantive issues like territories, like security guarantees, sanctions and whatsoever before we reach the ceasefire,” he added.
However, Russia has its own terms for a ceasefire. It says the “root cause” of the conflict should be addressed for durable peace, referring to its opposition to NATO’s eastward expansion.
Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in Istanbul, said they had proposed a “two or three days [of ceasefire] in certain areas to collect bodies of soldiers on the fronts”. This was dismissed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who wrote on social media, “the whole point of a ceasefire is to stop people from becoming dead”.
Meeting of the leaders
The Ukrainian delegation also pushed for a direct meeting between Mr. Zelenskyy and Mr. Putin. “We propose to the Russian side to hold a meeting [of the leaders] by the end of this month, from June 20 to 30. This is crucial for making progress in the negotiation process,” Mr. Umerov said.
The Ukrainians have very little faith in the authority of any delegation sent by Russia, one of their official said. “In Russia, Putin is the person who decides everything… decisions on the ceasefire, on other crucial elements,” he said.
“Our president is ready to meet tomorrow, if Putin says I’m ready. President Zelenskyy will meet him right away.”
Mr. Zelenskyy had also offered to meet with Mr. Putin during the last Istanbul talks, a move that was initially supported by the U.S. and Turkish officials. However, the invitation was rejected by Mr. Putin.
Prisoner exchange
Despite the brevity of the meetings and the escalation of violence, some progress was made in the form of a deal on the exchange of prisoners of war.
Similar to the outcome of the last Istanbul meeting, which resulted in the largest yet prisoner exchange, it is expected that both sides will commit to an exchange of 1,000 prisoners, prioritising young soldiers, those between 18 and 25 years, and the severely sick and wounded. “We also agreed to return 6,000 to 6,000 bodies for fallen soldiers,” Mr. Umerov said.
Another key demand put forth by the Ukrainian side was the return of nearly 400 Ukrainian children who were allegedly abducted by Russian forces from the territories Russia captured. “This matter is a fundamental priority for us,” Mr. Umerov said. “If Russia is genuinely committed to the peace process, the return of at least half of the children from this list would be serving as a positive indication,” he added.
An investigation by Yale researchers, published in 2024, found 20,000 children were reportedly taken and transferred to Russian and Belarusian territories where they were enrolled into “re-education” camps. The case of the alleged abduction of children also led the International Criminal Court, in 2023, to issue arrest warrants against President Putin and other Russian officials.
While the Russian delegation confirmed to a section of the media that they had received a list of 339 individuals, they did not elaborate whether it was a demand they would consider.
As the brief meeting came to a close, the members of both delegations stayed behind to address the media, starting with the Ukrainians, held in one of the many grandiose rooms in the Ottoman-era palace.
However, as the first press conference ended and the Ukrainian flag was swapped with the Russian one to set the stage for the next media briefing, journalists who interacted with the Ukrainian officials were asked to leave. The Russian delegation held a closed-room briefing with journalists from largely their own national publications and broadcasters.
The meagre success of the negotiations was tested in the following hours as Russia launched airstrikes and shelling across multiple locations on the eastern Ukrainian provinces, and Ukraine launched an underwater attack at the Crimea bridge, which connects the Black Sea peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, with Russian mainland.
While referring to their operations, a day earlier, a Ukrainian diplomat in Turkiye rejected assertions equating hostilities on both sides. “Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is a country that is defending itself,” he said, adding that Russia hits Ukraine’s residential areas, kills children and civilians, while Ukraine only targets legitimate military sites inside Russia. “They are not comparable… but the war goes on,” he said.
On the other side, Russian officials have repeatedly accused the Ukrainian forces of targeting civilian areas in Donbas and Russia’s border regions.
(Ruchi Kumar is an independent journalist based in Istanbul.)
Published – June 05, 2025 04:30 am IST