Russia and Ukraine resume peace talks in Istanbul following major airbase attack
RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN officials will meet in Istanbul today to exchange proposals on how to end the war, just one day after Ukraine struck dozens of Russian strategic bombers at airbases deep inside Russian territory.
Prompted by US President Donald Trump, Moscow and Kyiv have resumed direct negotiations for the first time since the early months of Russia's invasion. However, progress toward a peace agreement remains limited.
Today's discussions follow one of Ukraine's most audacious and successful attacks on Russian soil.
Ukraine said it damaged around 40 long-range bombers worth an estimated $7 billion at airbases located far from the front lines. Ukraine's security services said the 18-month operation involved smuggling drones into Russia, which were launched from inside the country.
At last month's initial round of talks in Istanbul, the two sides agreed to a large-scale prisoner exchange and shared outlines of their respective visions for a peace deal.
The second round is set to begin at 1pm (10am Irish time) at the historic Ciragan Palace, an Ottoman-era mansion now operating as a luxury hotel on the Bosphorus.
Russia says it will present a 'memorandum' outlining its terms but has refused to send its demands in advance, despite pressure from Ukraine.
Despite this new round of diplomacy, the two sides remain far apart. Ukraine is demanding an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, the release of prisoners, and the return of abducted children, President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday.
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Zelensky also called for a direct meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying, 'The key issues can only be resolved by the leaders.'
The Kremlin has rejected that idea, insisting a summit could only follow progress in lower-level negotiations.
Russia continues to question Zelensky's legitimacy and has pushed for sweeping demands, including limits on Ukraine's military, a ban on NATO membership, and large territorial concessions – conditions Kyiv and Western allies have strongly rejected as imperialist.
Tens of thousands have died since Russia's 2022 invasion. Large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine have been destroyed, and millions have been displaced.
Negotiation figures
Russia will be represented by Vladimir Medinsky, a close Putin ally and nationalist ideologue who led failed negotiations in 2022.
Ukraine's delegation is headed by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, seen as pragmatic but currently facing domestic scrutiny over alleged misconduct.
Diplomatic advisors from Germany, France, and the UK will be present in Istanbul to support Ukraine's delegation, a German government spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, fighting continues on the ground. Russian forces are advancing in the northeastern Sumy region, where President Putin has ordered the creation of a 'buffer zone' along the border.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine cut ties with Western military support and surrender territory. Ukraine, however, insists on holding its ground and says only a full ceasefire will allow space for longer-term peace talks.
Though Kyiv acknowledges that some territory may only be regained through diplomacy, not war, it continues to demand strong Western security guarantees – such as NATO protection or foreign troops on the ground – measures Moscow has firmly rejected.
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You might be expecting me, a topical columnist, to give you, the schoolchildren of Ireland, a timely pep talk about the Leaving Cert exams you've just started, perhaps with a stirring tale from my own experience. Sadly, I can't do that because I never did the Leaving Cert. I was raised in Derry, and thus the British school system, so I did A-levels. They are, I'm sure, similar enough to the Leaving Cert that much of my advice would still be relevant, but still different enough that it wouldn't really make much sense to apply them directly to the exams you're sitting now. Such are the slightly odd contradictions of being raised in Northern Ireland and discovering, over many years, that many of the full-fat tropes of standard Irishness are not universally applied both sides of the border. I should be clear up-front that I've never felt any neurosis about this. It would, I suppose, take a lot for someone named Séamas O'Reilly to gain a complex about being insufficiently Irish. Sometimes, however, these complexes are thrust in front of me. Rarely, however, in London, where few locals know, or care, the difference between north and south. Here, it's mostly had a simplifying effect, where I might as well be from Tallaght, Togher, or Twomileborris, if they had any clue where those places were. No, here it's my status as an undercover Brit that surprises people, and has even granted me the opportunity to shock unsuspecting Londoners with my deep knowledge of BBC radio comedy, or British cultural products of our shared yesteryear. More deliciously still, it's also allowed me to correct them when they've called me an immigrant, usually with the attendant undertone that I should complain less about my gracious hosts. When, this week, the Telegraph printed a rabidly scaremongering report that 'White British people will be a minority in 40 years', they clarified this cohort as 'the white British share of the population — defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent'. Leaving aside how garbled that formulation is — there are millions of non-white Brits who meet that definition perfectly — it carried with it a parallel consequence. I myself do not have an immigrant parent. In fact, every single pale and freckled ancestor of mine since 1800, Irish farmers to a soul, was born and raised in something called the United Kingdom. This is true for a large number of Irish people in the North. And since the late Prince Philip was himself a Greek immigrant, it gives me great pleasure to point out that they'd settled on a definition of 'White British' which includes Gerry Adams but excludes King Charles III. The only people who've ever questioned my Irishness — to my face — are other Irish people, admittedly rarely, and almost always in the form of gentle ribbing from the sort of pub comedians who call their straight-haired friend 'Curly'. The type who're fond of hearing me say 'Derry' and asking, reflexively, whether I mean 'Londonderry'. In the time-honoured tradition of any Derry person who's encountered this comment — oh, five or six million times in their life — I simply laugh it off and say I've heard that one before. Similarly, if some irrepressible wit asks a Derry person whether we're in the IRA, we'll tell them that's quite an offensive stereotype, while also peppering the rest of our conversation with vague, disconcerting comments designed to imply that we might indeed be members of a paramilitary organisation and that they should, therefore, stop talking to us. For the most part, I regard my British birth certificate and UK-system schooling as a mundane quirk of my fascinating personal biography. I am, in fact, confident enough in my identity that tabulating concrete differences between the North and South has simply become something of a hobby. The Leaving Cert is one such mystery. I gather that it involves every student in Ireland taking tests in about 760 subjects, crammed into the same time I was given to learn four. And that you must take Irish throughout the entirety of your schooling, so that you can emerge from 13 straight years of daily instruction in the language, cursing the fact you never got a chance to learn it. I know, vaguely, that some part of this learning involves a book about — by? — a woman named Peig, and that the very mention of her name inspires tens of thousands of Irish people my age to speak in tones of awe, nostalgia, mockery and reverence, always in English. Of course, almost all facets of the Irish school system are exotic to me. I feel that no finer term has ever been coined for small children than 'senior infants' but I've no idea what age it could possibly apply to. I know that there is such a thing as a transition year, but not what that means, precisely, still less what it's for. I know that summer holidays are different, namely that they're longer than what we get up North. I primarily know this because I grew up on the border and suffered the cruel indignity of marching off to school each June, in full sight of my friends eight feet away in Donegal, who seemed to have summer holidays that lasted about eight months of the year. I was told, perhaps erroneously, that this period of glorious leisure stems from the days when kids were expected to be at home on the farm, and the school calendar augmented so as to enable the nation-sustaining pyramid of child labour this demanded. I saw no sign of this in the few kids I'd spy from the bus window as I was conveyed to class, idling on deck chairs and inflating beach balls in the driving rain. Know that you have this glorious reward in your near future, if you're worried about the exams you've just begun. I hope the few you've started have already gone well. Take solace. Be unafraid. By my count, there's just 740 more to go. Read More Colm O'Regan: Cleaning the house can both spark joy and cause a panic
