Latest news with #IstanbulTalks
BreakingNews.ie
3 hours ago
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Zelensky condemns ‘brutal' rocket attack after four killed in Ukrainian city
A Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, in which at least four people were killed and many others injured, was described by President Volodymyr Zelensky as 'brutal'. According to authorities, a barrage of multiple rockets struck apartment buildings and a medical facility in the centre of the north-eastern city a day after direct peace talks made no progress on ending the three-year war. Advertisement Mr Zelensky said one of the rockets fired at Sumy pierced the wall of an apartment building but failed to detonate. 'That's all you need to know about Russia's 'desire' to end this war,' Mr Zelensky wrote in a post on Telegram. 'It is clear that without global pressure, without decisive action from the United States, Europe, and everyone in the world who holds power, (Russian president Vladimir) Putin will not agree even to a ceasefire.' At talks in Istanbul on Monday, delegations from the warring countries agreed to swap dead and wounded troops. But their terms for ending the war remained far apart. Advertisement Russian President Vladimir Putin (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) The war has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations, as well as tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 620-mile front line where the war of attrition is grinding on despite US-led efforts to broker a peace deal. Though Russia has a bigger army and more economic resources than Ukraine, a spectacular Ukrainian drone attack that Ukrainian officials said damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia was a serious blow to the Kremlin's strategic arsenal and its military prestige. Both Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin have been eager to show US president Donald Trump that they share his ambition to end the fighting, thereby aiming to avoid possible punitive measures from Washington. Ukraine has accepted a US-proposed ceasefire, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Mr Putin has made it clear that any peace settlement has to be on his terms. Advertisement A senior Ukrainian delegation led by first deputy prime minister and economy minister Yuliia Svyrydenko has travelled to Washington for talks about defence, sanctions and post-war recovery, Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential office, said. The delegation will meet with representatives from both major US political parties, as well as with advisers to Mr Trump, Mr Yermak added. Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who now serves as deputy head of the country's Security Council chaired by Mr Putin, indicated there would be no let-up in Russia's invasion of its neighbour. 'The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else's delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction of (Ukraine's government),' he said. Advertisement In an apparent comment on the latest Ukrainian strikes, he declared that 'retribution is inevitable'. 'Our army is pushing forward and will continue to advance,' Mr Medvedev said, adding that 'everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be'. Ukrainians on the streets of Kyiv welcomed their country's stunning drone strike on Russian air bases but were gloomy about the chances for a peace agreement. The Russians 'won't negotiate peace with anyone,' said 43-year-old Ukrainian serviceman Oleh Nikolenko. 'Russia has invested too many resources in this war to just … stop for nothing.' Advertisement Anastasia Nikolenko, a 38-year-old designer, said diplomacy cannot stop the fighting. 'We need to show by force, by physical force, that we cannot be defeated,' she said. Russia has recently expanded its attacks on Sumy and in the Kharkiv region following Mr Putin's promise to create a buffer zone along the border that might prevent long-range Ukrainian attacks hitting Russian soil. Sumy is about 15 miles from the Russian border. It had a prewar population of around 250,000.
Al Jazeera
15 hours ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Russia-Ukraine direct talks: No ceasefire, but what did they agree to?
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a new prisoner swap and the return of thousands of dead soldiers during direct talks in Istanbul, although little headway was made towards ending the war. The rival 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. The Istanbul meeting, which lasted less than two hours, marked the second time the warring countries have convened for direct talks in less than a month, but expectations were low amid recent military escalations from both sides. The first round of direct talks on May 16 also ended without a breakthrough, but the two sides agreed on a prisoner swap. '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. Negotiators from both countries confirmed that 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 in May. 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. He also said his negotiators had given their Russian counterparts a list of nearly 400 abducted Ukrainian children that Kyiv wanted Moscow to return home, but that the Russian delegation agreed to work on returning only 10 of them. 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. For its part, 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,' Russia's lead negotiator Medinsky said, adding that this was needed to collect the bodies of dead soldiers from battlefields. However, 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 successfully targeted airbases in three distant regions – the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East – thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. Zelenskyy said the setback for Russia's military would increase pressure on Moscow to return to the negotiating table. At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin's terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said. Ukraine's Defence Minister Umerov told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. After the talks, Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested as a condition for a ceasefire that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured. As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilisation efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions that were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities. The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognise Russian as the country's official language on par with Ukrainian. Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow. Looking ahead, Ukraine has proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he is ready to meet with Putin. Andrey Fedorov, a former deputy foreign minister of Russia, says little progress was made in Monday's talks and the rival sides are still at odds on key points. 'All the main political questions were left unopened,' he told Al Jazeera, adding that while both sides presented the other with memorandums for peace proposals, they were 'very contradictory to each other'. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the talks 'magnificent'. 'My greatest wish is to bring together Putin and Zelenskyy in Istanbul or Ankara and even add [United States President Donald] Trump along,' he said. Both Trump and Putin have said for months they are eager to meet each other, but no date has been set. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Monday said that Trump was 'open' to a leader-level meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin. Trump is 'open to it and wants leaders to sit down at the table', Leavitt said replying to a question. Trump, after piling heavy pressure on Ukraine and clashing with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, has lately expressed growing impatience that Putin may be 'tapping me along.' 'Nothing's going to happen until Putin and I get together,' Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on May 15. Then, on May 26, Trump described Putin as 'absolutely crazy' after Moscow launched its largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine, killing at least 13 people. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump's unpredictability has often provoked dismay from Ukraine and its European allies.
Russia Today
a day ago
- General
- Russia Today
Russian and Ukrainian chief negotiators held secret private meeting
Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia's diplomatic delegation at the Istanbul talks, held a private bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, which played an 'important role' in preparing the general session of negotiations on Monday. The second round of direct talks between Moscow and Kiev concluded on Monday after more than an hour of dialogue. Prior to the formal session, Medinsky and Umerov held an unannounced meeting that helped facilitate the broader negotiations. 'There was a meeting. It played an important role in the preparation of the general session,' Medinsky told reporters, without offering further details. A source who requested anonymity told RT that the private conversation allegedly lasted around two and a half hours. During the talks in Istanbul, both sides exchanged memorandums outlining their respective proposals for resolving the Ukraine conflict. Kiev's delegation took Russia's draft document for review and is expected to issue a formal response at a later date, Medinsky said following the session. The two sides also agreed to their largest prisoner-of-war exchange to date, according to Medinsky. The swap will involve all sick and severely wounded POWs, as well as all prisoners under the age of 25, and 'will include at least 1,000 people from each side, possibly more,' the presidential aide noted. In addition, Moscow will unilaterally return the remains of 6,000 Ukrainian service members to Kiev next week to allow for proper 'Christian burial,' he added. Russia has also proposed a multi-day ceasefire in several frontline areas to facilitate the recovery of fallen soldiers' bodies and prevent potential disease outbreaks as temperatures rise with the onset of summer.
Russia Today
2 days ago
- Business
- Russia Today
Details of Ukraine's proposals for talks with Russia revealed
The memorandum prepared by Ukraine for the Istanbul talks with Russia rejects Moscow's key demands for recognition of new Russian regions, neutrality for Kiev, and limitations on the size of Ukraine's armed forces, Reuters has reported. The second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine, which resumed after a three-year break in mid-May, is expected to take place in Türkiye on Monday. The two sides earlier agreed that they will each present memorandums detailing their vision of how to settle the conflict. Reuters reported on Sunday that Kiev's document does not include recognition of Crimea, the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as part of Russia. According to Ukraine, the current shape of the front line should be the starting point for negotiations on territory, it added. Kiev also insists that it cannot be forced to accept neutrality, claiming that its potential NATO membership should only depend on a consensus within the US-led military bloc, the agency said. Restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military armed forces have also reportedly been ruled out in Kiev's memorandum. However, it calls for Russia to pay reparations and for the use of Moscow's assets frozen by the West to rebuild Ukraine, Reuters said. According to the agency, Kiev's roadmap begins with a demand for a full ceasefire of at least 30 days, an exchange of prisoners in an 'all-for-all' format, followed by a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky. Reuters noted that the demands in the Ukrainian memorandum 'diverge considerably' from the terms previously voiced by Russia. Moscow has declined to make the details of its memorandum public or present it to the Ukrainians before the talks in Istanbul. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last week that the document includes the 'principles of [a] settlement, a timeframe for a potential peace agreement, [and] a potential ceasefire for a certain period of time.' Russian officials have stressed that any peace deal with Ukraine should address the root causes of the conflict and include guarantees of Kiev's neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the new territorial reality on the ground.
ABC News
2 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Ukraine sets out demands ahead of Russia negotiations
Ukrainian negotiators in Türkiye will demand Russia agree to a full 30-day ceasefire and the swap of all prisoners-of-war from both countries when the two sides meet later on Monday. The talks, expected to be held in Istanbul, will be the second time the adversaries have met to discuss a potential peace agreement in the last month. Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in May amid pressure from the Trump administration for a diplomatic end to the three-year invasion. In documents shown to news agency Reuters, Ukrainian negotiators are set to make a series of demands to the Russian delegation. Under the blueprint, Moscow and Kyiv — with the participation of the United States and Europe — will work to hash out the terms on which they can agree to put a complete end to their three-year-old war, the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two. Ukraine's starting point will include no restrictions on Ukraine's military strength after a peace deal is struck, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow's forces, and reparations for Ukraine. The starting point would be a "full and unconditional ceasefire in the sky, on land and at sea as a necessary background and prerequisite for peace negotiations". The document also stated that the current location of the front line would form the basis for negotiations about territory. "The aim of the negotiations is to restore a permanent basis for lasting peace and security and to ensure that aggression does not occur again," the document said. The outline also demands "the leaders of Ukraine and Russia meet to agree on key aspects of final peace settlement". Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month challenged his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to meet at the first round of Istanbul talks, but the longtime president instead sent a low-level delegation. Ukraine's terms diverge considerably from demands that Russia has made publicly in the past few weeks. US President Donald Trump has urged Moscow and Kyiv to work together on a deal to end their war, and Russia has proposed a second round of face-to-face talks with Ukrainian officials next week in Istanbul. Kyiv said earlier this week it is committed to the search for peace, but that it was waiting for a memorandum from the Russian side setting out their proposals which has not materialised. Nevertheless, Mr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that he will send a delegation of his officials to meet their Russian counterparts in Istanbul. On Sunday, a day before the talks were scheduled, Ukraine carried out an audacious series of attacks on Russian air bases. Ukraine's military says it struck upwards of 40 Russian planes using drones. Reuters
