Russia and Ukraine agree to prisoner swap but peace talks stall in Istanbul

Al Jazeera

2 days ago

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a new prisoner swap and the return of thousands of war dead during direct talks in Istanbul although little headway was made towards ending the war.
The delegations met on Monday at the Ottoman-era Ciragan Palace in the Turkish city, and officials confirmed that both sides will exchange prisoners of war and the remains of 6,000 soldiers killed in combat.
Negotiators from both sides confirmed they had reached a deal to swap all severely wounded soldiers as well as all captured fighters under the age of 25.
'We agreed to exchange all-for-all seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war. The second category is young soldiers who are from 18 to 25 years old – all-for-all,' Ukraine's lead negotiator and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told reporters in Istanbul.
Russia's lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said the swap would involve 'at least 1,000' on each side – topping the 1,000-for-1,000 POW exchange agreed at talks last month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking from Vilnius, Lithuania, said the two parties 'exchanged documents through the Turkish side' and Kyiv was preparing for the next group of captives to be released.
The Istanbul meeting marks the second direct dialogue in less than a month, but expectations were low. The talks on May 16 produced another major prisoner swap but failed to reach a ceasefire.
'The exchange of prisoners seems to be the diplomatic channel that actually works between Russia and Ukraine,' Al Jazeera correspondent Dmitry Medvedenko said, reporting from Istanbul.
'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.
Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv also handed over a list of children it accuses Russia of abducting and demanded their return.
As for a truce, Russia and Ukraine remain sharply divided.
'The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire,' Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the talks.
Russia said it had offered a limited pause in fighting.
'We have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line,' top negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said, adding this was needed to collect bodies of dead soldiers from the battlefield
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the talks 'magnificent'.
'My greatest wish is to bring together [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Zelenskyy in Istanbul or Ankara and even add [United States President Donald] Trump along,' he said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who chaired the talks, said the world was watching closely. He acknowledged the two sides had discussed the conditions for a ceasefire but no tangible outcome was announced.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, told Al Jazeera he was not very optimistic about the talks in Istanbul.
'Russia clearly shows that they don't want to end the war because Ukraine proposed a 30-days ceasefire in March, and the American and Europe proposition was the same, but only one country [Russia] refused,' Goncharenko said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has ramped up its military efforts far beyond the front lines, claiming responsibility for drone attacks on Sunday that it said damaged or destroyed more than 40 Russian warplanes. The operation targeted airbases in three distant regions – the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East – thousands of kilometres from Ukraine.
'This brilliant operation will go down in history,' Zelenskyy said, calling the raids a turning point in Ukraine's struggle.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks crippled nearly a third of Russia's strategic bomber fleet. Vasyl Maliuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said the mission had taken more than a year to plan.
Zelenskyy said the setback for Russia's military would increase pressure on Moscow to return to the negotiating table.
'Russia must feel the cost of its aggression. That is what will push it towards diplomacy,' he said during his visit to Lithuania, where he met leaders from NATO's eastern flank and Nordic countries.
Ukraine's air force, meanwhile, reported that Russia launched 472 drones on Sunday – the highest number since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022 – aiming to exhaust Ukrainian air defences. Most of those drones targeted civilian areas, it said.
On Monday, Russian forces bombarded southern Ukraine's Kherson region, killing three people and injuring 19, including two children. Separately, five people were killed and nine injured in attacks near Zaporizhzhia in the neighbouring Zaporizhia region.
Russia's Ministry of Defence said its forces had intercepted 162 Ukrainian drones overnight across eight regions and Crimea while Ukraine said it shot down 52 out of 80 drones launched by Russia.
Zelenskyy warned that if the Istanbul talks fail to deliver results, more sanctions against Russia will be necessary. 'If there's no breakthrough, then new, strong sanctions must follow – urgently,' he said.