Istanbul (AFP) – US President Donald Trump is “open” to meeting his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Turkey, the White House said, after the two sides failed on Monday to make headway towards an elusive ceasefire. Delegations from both sides did, however, agree on another large-scale prisoner exchange during their meeting in Istanbul, which in mid-May also hosted their first round of face-to-face talks.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Trump come together for a third round later this month in either Istanbul or Ankara. Putin has so far refused such a meeting. However, Zelensky has expressed his willingness, underlining that key issues can only be resolved at the leaders’ level. Trump, who aims for a swift end to the three-year war, is “open” to a three-way summit “if it comes to that,” but he wants both leaders and both sides to come to the table together, according to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.
Despite Trump’s willingness to meet with Putin and Zelensky, no US representative participated in Monday’s talks in Istanbul, according to a State Department spokesperson. Zelensky remarked, “We are very much awaiting strong steps from the United States” and urged Trump to impose tougher sanctions on Russia to “push” it to agree to a full ceasefire. During the meeting, Ukraine reported that Moscow had rejected its call for an unconditional ceasefire, offering instead a partial truce of two to three days in some areas of the frontline. Russia will only agree to a full ceasefire if Ukrainian troops withdraw entirely from four regions: Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, according to terms reported by Russian state media. Moscow has also demanded a ban on Kyiv joining NATO, limiting Ukraine’s military and ending Western military support.
Top negotiators from both sides agreed to swap all severely wounded soldiers and captured fighters under the age of 25. Russia’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, mentioned that this would involve “at least 1,000” individuals on each side. The two sides also consented to hand over the bodies of 6,000 soldiers, as Ukraine stated after the talks. “The Russian side continued to reject the motion of an unconditional ceasefire,” Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya told reporters after the discussions. Russia claimed it had proposed a limited pause in fighting. “We have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line,” Medinsky stated, adding that this was necessary to retrieve the bodies of deceased soldiers from the battlefield.
Zelensky responded on social media, criticizing the notion of a limited ceasefire by stating, “I think ‘idiots,’ because the whole point of a ceasefire is to stop people from becoming dead in the first place.” Kyiv mentioned it would review a document handed to its negotiators by the Russian side outlining its demands for both peace and a full ceasefire. Zelensky emphasized that any deal for lasting peace must not “reward” Putin, and he called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to encompass combat on land, in the air, and at sea.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led his country’s delegation, advocated for a subsequent meeting to occur before the end of June. He also suggested that a Putin-Zelensky summit should be considered. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan remarked after the talks—held inside a luxury hotel on the banks of the Bosphorus—that they were conducted “in a constructive atmosphere.” “During the meeting, the parties decided to continue preparations for a possible meeting at the leader level,” Fidan noted on social media.
Tens of thousands have lost their lives since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, resulting in vast areas of eastern and southern Ukraine being devastated and millions being displaced in Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. In the frontline town of Dobropillya in eastern Ukraine, 53-year-old Volodymyr expressed to AFP that he had no hope left for an end to the conflict. “We thought that everything would stop. And now there is nothing to wait for. We have no home, nothing. We were almost killed by drones,” he recounted.
Following months of setbacks for Kyiv’s military, Ukraine asserted that it had executed an audacious attack on Sunday, smuggling drones into Russia and subsequently firing them at airbases, damaging around 40 strategic Russian bombers worth $7 billion in a significant special operation.
© 2024 AFP
