Prisoner swap agreed but no ceasefire after latest Ukraine-Russia talks

Negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul ended without agreement on a ceasefire yesterday, but with both sides agreeing to exchange more prisoners.

- Ruth Michaelson Istanbul Julian Borger

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the two sides had each agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war, with the possibility of swapping an additional 200 PoWs. He said agreement had also been made to return the remains of killed service personnel, but added that this would take careful preparation.

Zelenskyy did not take part in the talks but was speaking during a visit to Lithuania, where he called for stronger sanctions on Russia if it did not agree to a ceasefire.

He 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.

Ukrainian officials said the focus of the prisoner exchange should be the wounded and sick as well as young soldiers between 18 and 25 years old. Russian officials confirmed that "all" sick and wounded prisoners would be swapped, and that the exchange would involve at least 1,000 PoWs.

Yesterday's negotiations took place at the Çırağan Palace, a vast 19th-century Ottoman edifice on the banks of the Bosphorus that is now a luxury hotel. In one of its expansive, high-ceilinged conference chambers, the two delegations, each about a dozen strong, sat at long tables facing each other, about 10 metres apart. The Russians all came in dark suits, while the Ukrainians were mostly in military uniform. The meeting took less than two hours.

After the talks the head Ukrainian negotiator, the defence minister, Rustem Umerov, said the return of the abducted children "is a fundamental priority for us".