Russia, Ukraine discuss more POW swops; no deal on ceasefire or Putin-Zelensky meeting
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov (centre) briefing the media after a third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on July 23
ISTANBUL - Russia and Ukraine discussed further prisoner swops on July 23 at a brief session of peace talks in Istanbul, but the sides remained far apart on ceasefire terms and a possible meeting of their leaders.
'We have progress on the humanitarian track, with no progress on a cessation of hostilities,' Ukraine's chief delegate, Mr Rustem Umerov, said after talks that lasted just 40 minutes.
He said Ukraine had proposed a meeting before the end of August between Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He added: 'By agreeing to this proposal, Russia can clearly demonstrate its constructive approach.'
Russia's chief delegate, Mr Vladimir Medinsky, said the point of a leaders' meeting should be to sign an agreement, not to 'discuss everything from scratch'.
He renewed Moscow's call for a series of short ceasefires of 24-48 hours to enable the retrieval of bodies.
Ukraine says it wants an immediate and
much longer ceasefire.
The talks took place just over a week after US President Donald Trump
threatened heavy new sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its exports unless a peace deal was reached within 50 days.
There was no sign of any progress towards that goal, although both sides said there was discussion of further humanitarian exchanges following a series of prisoner swops, the latest of which took place on July 23.
Mr Medinsky said the negotiators agreed to exchange at least 1,200 more prisoners of war from each side, and Russia had offered to hand over another 3,000 Ukrainian bodies.
He said Moscow was working through a list of 339 names of Ukrainian children that Kyiv accuses it of abducting. Russia denies that charge and says it has offered protection to children separated from their parents during the war.
'Some of the children have already been returned back to Ukraine. Work is under way on the rest. If their legal parents, close relatives, representatives are found, these children will immediately return home,' Mr Medinsky said.
Mr Umerov said Kyiv was expecting 'further progress' on POWs, adding: 'We continue to insist on the release of civilians, including children.'
Ukrainian authorities say at least 19,000 children have been forcibly deported.
Shortest talks yet
Before the talks, the Kremlin had played down expectations, describing the two sides' positions as diametrically opposed and saying no one should expect miracles.
At 40 minutes, the meeting was even shorter than the two sides' previous encounters on May 16 and June 2, which lasted a combined total of under three hours.
Mr Oleksandr Bevz, a member of the Ukrainian delegation, said Kyiv had proposed a Putin-Zelensky meeting in August because that would fall within the deadline set by Mr Trump for a deal.
Mr Putin turned down a previous challenge from Mr Zelensky to meet in person and has said he does not see him as a legitimate leader because Ukraine - which is under martial law because of Moscow's invasion - did not hold new elections when Mr Zelensky's five-year mandate expired in 2024.
Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky (second from left) speaking to the media on July 23.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Trump has patched up relations with Mr Zelensky after a public row with him at the White House in February, and has lately expressed growing frustration with Mr Putin.
Three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters last week that Mr Putin, unfazed by Mr Trump's ultimatum, would keep fighting in Ukraine until the West engaged on his terms for peace, and that his territorial demands may widen as Russian forces advance. REUTERS
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
Indigenous group lodges application for federal protection of Brisbane stadium site
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox FILE PHOTO: A man walks at the Victoria Park-Barrambin, where the main stadium will be built for the 2032 Olympics, in Brisbane, Australia July 21, 2025. REUTERS/Nick Mulvenney/File Photo SYDNEY - A group representing Brisbane's two Indigenous peoples lodged an application with the Australian federal government on Tuesday for the permanent protection of the site where the city plans to build the main stadium for the 2032 Olympics. The Yagara and Magandjin peoples want the inner city Victoria Park, known to them as Barrambin, to be protected for perpetuity under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act as a "significant Aboriginal area". "Barrambin is living country, possessing sacred, ancient and significant relationships within our cultural heritage systems," elder Gaja Kerry Charlton said in a statement on behalf of the Yagara Magandjin Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC). "It was a complete shock when the Premier came out with his stadium plans ... I thought the park was safe. Now the government wants to destroy it. We are very concerned there are ancient trees, artefacts and very important eco-systems existing there. There may be ancestral remains. "We stand resolute in our responsibility to protect it." No one at the organising committee for the Games, or the Office for the Deputy Premier of Queensland Jarrod Bleijie, who is responsible for Olympic construction, was immediately available for comment. After years of political wrangling, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli announced in March that a 63,000-seat stadium would be constructed and Victoria Park's Centenary Pool rebuilt to provide a 25,000-seat aquatics centre for the Olympics. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. World Israel to decide next steps in Gaza after ceasefire talks collapse Singapore 'I wish I can hear her sing again,' says boyfriend of Yishun fatal crash victim Asia What's it like to deal with brutal US tariffs? Ask Malaysia Singapore Singapore launches review of economic strategy to stay ahead of global shifts Singapore A look at the five committees reviewing Singapore's economic strategy Opinion Keeping it alive: How Chinese opera in Singapore is adapting to the age of TikTok Life Glamping in Mandai: Is a luxury stay at Colugo Camp worth the $550 price tag? In June, Crisafulli's government enacted legislation to exempt the Olympic building projects from normal planning rules. The Save Victoria Park campaign, which released a shared statement with YMAC on Tuesday, said June's legislation was "unprecedented" and overrode existing acts of parliament on environmental protection and First Nations rights. "We estimate the majority of the parkland and hundreds of mature trees will now be sacrificed," Save Victoria Park spokesperson Sue Bremner said. "And as we face this profound and irreversible loss of cultural heritage and human rights, Olympic organisers continue to promote 2032 as being the first Games with a Reconciliation Action Plan. It is simply astounding." Organising committee President Andrew Liveris told Reuters last month that anyone who objected to the development would be heard, but that June's legislation was essential to keep the project on track to deliver the venues before 2032. REUTERS
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
When Trump changes his mind, Republicans find a way to fall in line
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Mr Donald Trump has a pattern of accepting results that benefit him and denigrating those he dislikes as being rigged or part of a scam. WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his top aides used to be all too happy to praise the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In February, Mr Trump displayed a chart in the Oval Office showing that the United States had gained an estimated 10,000 manufacturing jobs. When the bureau's March report came out, Ms Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, celebrated the 'GREAT NEWS!' on social media. And as recently as last week, Vice-President J.D. Vance promoted data from the bureau that showed an increase in jobs among US-born residents. That was then. After the bureau put out a less-than-impressive jobs report on Aug 1, Mr Trump fired Ms Erika McEntarfer, the agency's commissioner, and claimed the figures were rigged. (In the way of proof, he said it was 'my opinion'.) Now, many Trump allies who walk in lock step with the president are in an awkward position. They have to justify tarnishing the reputation of the very bureau whose work they had cited freely in the past. Some began arguing that there were too many revisions, long a part of the process in calculating jobs data. Others accused the bureau of lacking transparency. Some simply argued that the president had the right to fire whomever he likes. Still others repeated Mr Trump's claim of rigged data. Senator Markwayne Mullin who voted for Ms McEntarfer's confirmation in 2024, accused her on Fox News of generating 'fake reports'. 'I'm glad she's out of a job,' he said. Senator Roger Marshall who also voted for Ms McEntarfer, accused her of incompetence. 'Legacy media's wrong on why the BLS chief was fired,' Mr Marshall wrote on social media. 'It's not 'bad numbers' – it's incompetence. She inflated job numbers by 800,000 pre-election, then missed by 250,000 last two months. How can the Fed make sound decisions with such flawed data? Trump was right to act.' Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who in March had hailed the bureau's statistics showing strong job growth, backed Mr Trump's concerns about Ms McEntarfer in a post on social media. A spokesperson for Mr Vance – who had promoted the bureau's work the same day that Mr Trump fired Ms McEntarfer – said he was 'completely aligned with President Trump and was glad to see him dismiss the BLS commissioner'. Appearing on NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Mr Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, declined on Aug 3 to furnish detailed evidence that would substantiate the president's claims that data had been manipulated. Instead, Mr Hassett, who in the past has cited staff at the bureau as 'professionals', said, 'The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable.' On CBS' 'Face the Nation,' Mr Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative, cited the bureau's use of revisions, even though they are part of a normal process of shoring up statistical data to ensure it is accurate. 'There are always revisions, but sometimes you see these revisions go in really extreme ways,' Mr Greer said. 'And it's, you know, the president is the president. He can choose who works in the executive branch.' The White House distributed a document accusing Ms McEntarfer, a Biden appointee who was confirmed by a vote of 86-8 in the Senate, of a 'lengthy history of inaccuracies and incompetence'. 'The fact of the matter is that BLS has had clear problems with the reliability and accuracy of its employment statistics since the start of the Covid pandemic over five years ago,' the White House said in a statement on Aug 4. Mr Trump has a pattern of accepting results that benefit him and denigrating those he dislikes as being rigged or part of a scam. He has objected to the results of the Emmys, falsely claimed that President Barack Obama did not win the popular vote and asserted that his erstwhile rival Senator Ted Cruz of Texas 'stole' a primary victory from him in Iowa in 2016. After losing the 2020 election, Mr Trump spread the lie that the election had been stolen from him. And since returning to office, he has lashed out at the sources of bad news for his administration, including judges who rule against him. In May, when he received a mix of good and bad economic news, Mr Trump said the 'good parts' of the economy were his, while the 'bad parts' belonged to the previous administration. Mr Stephen J. Farnsworth, political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, said even though much of the economic news Ms McEntarfer delivered to the Trump White House was positive, 'that wasn't enough.' 'The firing is a warning to other government officials that Trump pays very close attention to whether the news makes him look good or not,' he said. 'The larger issue is what this means for markets and for investors. If we're talking about an environment where the impartiality or accuracy of government statistics is called into question, it's much harder for people to make rational and informed choices.' While it remains to be seen whom Mr Trump will appoint to the position, the vote will serve as a test for Republican senators. 'The key question for the Congress is: To what extent will they insist on a competent professional to be confirmed for this position going forward?' Prof Farnsworth said. NYTIMES
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
Trump's deal-making with other elite US schools scrambles Harvard negotiations
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox WASHINGTON – By the start of last week, Harvard University had signalled its readiness to meet President Donald Trump's demand that it spend US$500 million (S$643 million) to settle its damaging, monthslong battle with the administration and restore its crucial research funding. Then, two days after The New York Times reported that Harvard was open to such a financial commitment, the White House announced a far cheaper deal with Brown University: US$50 million, doled out over a decade, to bolster state workforce development programs. The terms stunned officials at Harvard, who marvelled that another Ivy League school got away with paying so little, according to three people familiar with the deliberations. But Harvard officials also bristled over how their university, after months of work to address antisemitism on campus and with a seeming advantage in its court fight against the government, was facing a demand from Mr Trump to pay 10 times more. The people who discussed the deliberations spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing talks that are supposed to remain confidential. White House officials are dismissive of the comparison between Brown and Harvard, arguing that their grievances against Harvard are more far-reaching, including assertions that the school has yet to do enough to ensure the safety of Jewish students and their claim that the school is flouting the Supreme Court's ruling on race-conscious admissions. 'If Harvard wants the Brown deal, then it has to be like Brown, and I just think it's not,' Ms May Mailman, the top White House official under Mr Stephen Miller who has served as the architect of the administration's crusade against top schools, said in an interview in the West Wing last week. Ms Mailman, who graduated from Harvard Law School, pointed out that Brown, unlike Harvard, did not sue the administration. She challenged Harvard to reach an agreement that included terms that would allow the government to more closely scrutinise its behaviour. 'If Harvard feels really good about what it's already doing, then great,' she said. 'Let's sign this deal tomorrow.' Harvard said on Aug 4 that it had no comment. But the White House's recent record of deal-making threatens to complicate the settlement talks, according to the people familiar with the talks. University officials were sensitive to the possibility that a deal with the government – after Harvard spent months waging a public fight against Mr Trump – would be seen as surrendering to the president and offering him a political gift. The terms of the Brown agreement, though, added new complexity to Harvard's internal debates about the size of a potential financial settlement. For many people close to those discussions, spending US$500 million is less of a concern than what forking that money over would signal on the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus and beyond. For those close to the discussions, Mr Trump's demand is far too large and they argue that acquiescing to it would be seen as the university scrambling to buy its way out of Mr Trump's ire. They contend that Harvard has taken far more aggressive steps than Columbia University – which agreed to a US$200 million fine in July – to combat antisemitism. They also note that Harvard, unlike Brown, did not publicly agree to consider divesting from Israel as a condition of ending campus protests lin 2024. (Brown's board ultimately voted not to divest.) Others at Harvard regard Mr Trump's proposal as a bargain for the school to get back billions of dollars in funding that make much of its society-shaping research possible. Before the Brown deal, Harvard leaders and the school's team were studying settlement structures that could insulate the nation's oldest and wealthiest university from accusations that it caved to Mr Trump. In their stop-and-start talks with the White House, they are expected to maintain their insistence on steps to shield the university's academic freedom. To that end, they are also likely to remain equally resistant to a monitoring arrangement that some fear would invite intrusions and stifle the school's autonomy. But Harvard has been exploring a structure in which any money the university agrees to spend will go to vocational and workforce training programs instead of the federal government, Mr Trump, his presidential library or allies, according to the three people briefed on the matter. Harvard officials believe that such an arrangement would allow them to argue to their students, faculty, alumni and others in academia that the funds would not be used to fill Mr Trump's coffers. Harvard's consideration of putting money toward workforce programmes aligns with some of what Mr Trump has espoused. In a social media post in May, the president talked up the prospect of taking US$3 billion from Harvard and 'giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!' But no matter the structure, White House officials have made clear that an extraordinary sum will be required to reach a settlement. Last week, after the Times reported the US$500 million figure, a journalist asked Mr Trump whether that amount would be enough to reach a deal. 'Well, it's a lot of money,' he replied. 'We're negotiating with Harvard.' Although Brown and Harvard are among the nation's richest and most prominent universities, the schools have significant differences, especially around their finances. The Trump administration has repeatedly castigated Harvard for its US$53 billion endowment, which is loaded with restrictions that limit how it may be used, but it has made far less fuss about Brown's similarly tied-up US$7 billion fund. Harvard also has much more federal research money at stake. The Trump administration has warned that it could ultimately strip US$9 billion in funding for Harvard; it threatened US$510 million in funding for Brown. One reason the Brown deal has so miffed Harvard officials is that some terms look much like those they expected for themselves. The government agreed, for instance, that it could not use the deal 'to dictate Brown's curriculum or the content of academic speech.' Brown avoided a monitoring arrangement, and the university won the right to direct its US$50 million settlement payment toward workforce programmes of its choosing. But Harvard has a more antagonistic relationship with the Trump administration, as the university has sued the administration to stop its retribution campaign against the school. That dynamic has fuelled worries at Harvard that the White House is seeking a far higher financial penalty as a punishment for fighting, not because the school's troubles alone warrant US$500 million. After Harvard refused a list of Trump administration demands in April, the university sued. In July, a federal judge in Boston appeared skeptical of the government's tactics when it blocked billions in research funding from Harvard. Before and after the July 21 hearing, the administration pursued a wide-ranging campaign against the university. In addition to its attack on Harvard's research money, the government has opened investigations, sought to block the school from enrolling international students, demanded thousands of documents and tried to challenge the university's accreditation, which is essential for students to be eligible for federal student aid programmes, such as Pell Grants. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services told Harvard that it had referred the university to the Justice Department 'to initiate appropriate proceedings to address Harvard's antisemitic discrimination.' 'Rather than voluntarily comply with its obligations under Title VI, Harvard has chosen scorched-earth litigation against the federal government,' Ms Paula Stannard, the director of the health department's Office for Civil Rights, wrote on July 31, referring to the section of federal civil rights law that bars discrimination on the basis of race, colour or national origin. 'The parties' several months' engagement has been fruitless.' As Harvard President Alan Garber and other university leaders face the White House's fury, they are also confronting campus-level misgivings about a potential deal with a president many at the school see as bent on authoritarianism. At best, many at Harvard view him as duplicitous and believe it would be risky for the university to enter a long-term arrangement. 'I think even the simplest deals with untrustworthy people can be challenging,' said Professor Oliver Hart, an economics professor at Harvard who won a Nobel Prize for his work on contract theory. 'But a continuing relationship is much, much worse, much harder.' Prof Hart warned that, no matter the written terms of a settlement, the federal government would retain enormous power with effectively limitless financial resources to take on Harvard. Ms Mailman, who recently left the full-time White House staff but remains involved in the administration's higher-education strategy, all but dared Harvard to stay defiant. 'I think there's still a deal to be had, but from our perspective, at the end of the day, Harvard has a US$53 billion endowment,' she said. 'They don't need federal funds. And even if they win a lawsuit, great. But what happens next year? What happens the year after?' NYTIMES
