No Ceasefire Progress in Istanbul Talks, Ukraine Proposes Zelensky-Putin Meeting

Delegations from Ukraine and Russia reached an agreement on a new prisoner exchange during talks in Istanbul, Turkey, on Monday. Ukraine also proposed a meeting between the leaders between 20 and 30 June. At the same time, no progress was made on the issue of a ceasefire. This was announced at a briefing by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian delegation.

The Gaze reports on this with reference to European Pravda.

Umerov noted that Ukraine saw Russia's proposals for a ceasefire and an end to the war for the first time at Monday's meeting, while Moscow did not respond to Ukraine's proposals.

‘Our teams will have a week to study the documents, after which we will be able to coordinate further steps,’ he said.

At the same time, the head of the Ministry of Defence said that the parties agreed to ‘focus on specific categories rather than numbers’ in the issue of the release of prisoners of war.

‘We agreed on an “all for all” exchange of seriously wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war. The second category is young soldiers between the ages of 18 and 25, “all for all”. We also agreed on the return of “6,000 for 6,000” bodies of fallen soldiers,’ he said.

Umerov confirmed that Ukraine had given Russia a list of several hundred Ukrainian children who had been deported to the Russian Federation and was waiting for Moscow to take action on this.

Another item on the agenda was organising a meeting at the leadership level, possibly involving other leaders, such as the US president.

‘We believe that further work between the delegations makes sense if it is aimed at preparing a meeting of leaders. We have proposed to the Russian side to hold a meeting at the leadership level by the end of this month – from 20 to 30 June. This is very important for the negotiation process,’ Umerov added.

The meeting between the delegations of Ukraine and the Russian Federation, which lasted just over an hour, was the second since 16 May.

As The Gaze reported earlier, after the previous meeting in Istanbul, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that during the talks, the Russian side made statements that were unacceptable to Ukraine.