• Second round with direct conversations held in Turkey.
• Russia and Ukraine still last far apart.
• Both sides agree on new prisoner exchange.

Peace interviews between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul ended almost an hour after they began Monday, a day after a massive Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s nuclear capable strategic bombers.

The negotiations – the other such direct contacts between the pages since 2022 – had already begun almost two hours later than planned without any explanation for the delay.

Although the atmosphere was muted and the source of dialogue, the negotiations gave an agreement to implement a new prisoner exchange, and Ukraine said another round of negotiations was on the agenda.

In Russia, before the negotiations began, angry war bloggers had called on Moscow to deliver a terrible retaliatory blasting against Kiev, after Ukraine launched one of its most ambitious attacks from the war that targeted Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Siberia and elsewhere.

Ukraine and Russia have issued sharply different assessments of the damage done on Russia’s fleet of strategic bombers – a key element in its nuclear arsenal – but it was clear from publicly available satellite images that Moscow had suffered some serious equipment loss.

“The whole world’s eyes are focused on the contacts here,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had told Russian and Ukrainian delegations at the beginning of the negotiations as they faced each other on opposite sides of space in the lavish Ciragan Palace at Bosphorus.

He said that the purpose of the meeting was to evaluate the conditions of a ceasefire, to discuss a possible meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents and to look at several prisoner exchange options.

The Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led Kyiv’s delegation, announced after the conversations that a new prisoner exchange had been agreed to follow up on the largest prisoner swap of the war that was broken in the final round of the negotiations.

He said the new exchange would focus on those who are seriously injured in the war and on young people.

Umerov also said that Moscow had submitted his own draft peace agreement to Ukraine and that Kyiv, who has prepared his own version, would review the Russian document.

Ukraine has proposed to give several lectures by the end of June, but believes that only a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin can solve the many questions of strife, Umerov said.

Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Kyiv’s delegation had handed over a list of children, as it said had been deported to Russia and as it wanted back. Moscow says such children were moved to protect them from combat.

The two sides had been expected on Monday to discuss their respective and wildly different ideas for what a full ceasefire and a long -term path to peace should look like in the midst of pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has said the United States could abandon its role as a broker if there is no progress.

But Umerov said Kyiv had not been able to respond to Russia’s proposal for peace because it had only seen them on Monday.

Make expectations

While both countries for various reasons are eager to keep Trump engaged in the peace process, expectations for a breakthrough on Monday had been low.

Ukraine considers Russia’s approach to date as an attempt to force it to capitulate – something Kyiv says it will never do – while Moscow, who went on on the battlefield in May at its fastest rate of six months, Kyiv says to submit to peace in Russian terms or face more territory.

Putin explained his opening conditions for an immediate end to the war in June last year: Ukraine has to drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw all its troops from all over the territory in four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.

According to a proposed roadmap prepared by Ukraine, whose copy was seen by Reuters, Kyiv does not want any restrictions on its military strength after any peace agreement, no international recognition of Russian sovereignty over parts of Ukraine taken by Moscow’s forces and wants repairs.

Russia is currently checking just below one fifth of Ukraine, or approx. 113,100 square kilometers, about the same size as the US state of Ohio.

Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, after eight years of battle in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.

The United States says that over 1.2 million people have been killed and wounded in the war since 2022.

Trump has called Putin “crazy” and calculated Zelenskiy publicly in the Oval Office, but the US president has also said he thinks peace is achievable and that if Putin delays, he could impose harsh sanctions on Russia.