Russia and Ukraine agreed a prisoner swap during their third set of direct talks in Istanbul on Wednesday, but appeared to make little progress on ceasefire terms or a possible summit between their presidents – with their meeting ending after less than an hour.
The meeting came days after US President Donald Trump gave Moscow a 50-day deadline to make peace or face “very severe tariffs.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not publicly acknowledged Trump’s ultimatum, and Moscow has continued to pummel Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles while its ground troops grind forward in the east.
Speaking after Wednesday’s meeting, Ukraine’s former defense minister Rustem Umerov – who led Kyiv’s delegation – said he had proposed a summit by the end of August between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin and suggested the “participation of (US) President Trump and (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan will be most valuable.”
However, Russia’s delegate Vladimir Medinsky, a former culture minister and now a senior Putin aide, said such a meeting would be appropriate only to sign an agreement, Reuters reported.
The two sides also remained at odds over the terms of any possible ceasefire, with Umerov saying Ukraine was seeking a “full and unconditional ceasefire as a necessary basis for effective diplomacy,” while Russia called for a series of short ceasefires of between 24 and 48 hours, on the front line, to allow medical teams to pick up dead and wounded soldiers.
The two sides did appear to find some common ground on prisoner exchanges, with Medinksy telling a press conference after the meeting that an exchange of around 250 Russian and 250 Ukrainian prisoners of war was being completed along the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
Medinsky said the two sides had also agreed “that in the near future an exchange of at least 1,200 more prisoners of war from each side will be carried out.”
The two previous rounds of talks in Istanbul, in May and June, helped facilitate the exchange of thousands of prisoners of war and the remains of dead soldiers, but also made little progress toward peace.
In a message on Telegram on Wednesday, Zelensky said more than 1,000 Ukrainians had now been returned through “all the stages of the recent Istanbul agreements.”
“Bringing all our people back is a priority for the state,” he said, “And we will continue all efforts to ensure that all our people return from captivity.”
Expectations were low before Wednesday’s talks, with Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressing that the two sides’ negotiating positions remain “diametrically opposed” and telling reports not to expect “any miraculous breakthroughs.”
Mounting casualties
Last month, Russian casualties hit a grim milestone, with the UK’s Ministry of Defence estimating that Putin’s war has likely cost Russia more than 1 million casualties since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
That number tracked with an assessment the same month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, DC, which put the number of casualties at 950,000 and predicted that “Russia will likely hit the 1 million casualty mark in the summer of 2025.”
Despite those losses, the Russian president has shown little sign of compromising on his maximalist war aim of dismantling Ukraine’s sovereignty. In a long essay published months before the full-scale invasion, Putin falsely argued that Russia and Ukraine are one country; his comments suggesting to many that the war has been waged to make that a reality.
In addition to Trump’s fresh threat of new sanctions on Russia and other countries that purchase Russian oil if peace isn’t reached in 50 days, the US also secured a deal to funnel new weapons to Kyiv through European allies. The moves were in stark contrast with previous approaches the US leader has taken with the conflict.
Trump’s reversal came after the European Union unveiled a new package of sanctions proposing to lower the price cap on Russian oil exports and introducing a full transaction ban on Russian banks and financial institutions in third countries that help Russia dodge existing sanctions.
It is unclear whether Trump’s latest decisions will sway Moscow’s approach, but his about-face could provide a much-needed boost to Ukraine’s military coffers, and signals his growing frustration with Putin.
“My conversations with him are very pleasant, and then the missiles go off at night,” Trump explained last week.
Before the talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his call for a direct meeting with Putin, saying only a meeting of the two leaders can end the war.
Katharina Krebs, Victoria Butenko and Anna Cooban contributed reporting.