Ukraine-Russia peace talks raise hopes but yield little progress

A woman walks past damaged buildings in Kupiansk, Ukraine, Friday, May 16, 2025. Russia and Ukraine were meeting in Istanbul on Monday, June 2, for peace talks, the second round of negotiations since the adversaries resumed direct dialogue two weeks ago. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

By Constant Méheut, Ivan Nechepurenko and Nataliya Vasilyeva

Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul on Monday for peace talks, a day after trading some of the most intense air attacks of the war, but the discussions appeared to produce little result beyond an agreement to exchange a limited number of prisoners of war and the bodies of fallen soldiers.

Russia and Ukraine had been expected to discuss their respective conditions for a peace deal, or at least a ceasefire, in the second round of negotiations since the two sides resumed direct dialogue two weeks ago.

But while Kyiv had shared its peace terms with Moscow ahead of the meeting, Russia did not reciprocate and presented its terms only during Monday’s talks, officials from both countries said. The Ukrainian delegation said it would need several days to review Moscow’s proposal, delaying further discussion.

“We couldn’t react to the Russian proposals quickly,” Serhii Kyslytsia, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, told reporters after the talks, which lasted less than 90 minutes and took place at a five-star hotel on the European side of the Bosporus.

The only concrete outcome of Monday’s talks was an agreement to exchange all gravely ill and wounded prisoners of war, as well as those under the age of 25. The total number of those prisoners is unclear. Both sides also announced a mutual agreement to exchange the bodies of 6,000 fallen soldiers each.

As with the previous meeting in Istanbul, substantive negotiations toward a peace agreement appeared to have been deferred, complicated by the two sides’ entrenched positions and the changing situation on the battlefield. Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, who headed his country’s delegation, said he hoped to reconvene for a new meeting before the end of June.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, would not say if the Russians would come back for another round of talks.

Russia and Ukraine are talking under pressure from President Donald Trump, who has alternatively cajoled and chided the leaders of both countries. But Russia and Ukraine have been holding firm, with neither expected to present conditions in the discussion that are acceptable to the other side.

As negotiations sputter, attacks on the battlefield have intensified. The Russian army appears to have launched a new offensive, advancing at the fastest pace since last fall and opening a new front in the northeastern Sumy region of Ukraine. It has also bombarded Ukrainian cities with some of the biggest drone and missile attacks of the war, including a barrage of 500 drones and decoys on Sunday.

Ukraine, for its part, has adapted and evolved in the face of a much larger military with deeper resources. Ukrainian drones, in an ambitious, coordinated attack — apparently launched from within Russia — struck air bases deep inside Russia this weekend.

Video verified by The New York Times showed that the assault damaged or destroyed some of the long-range bombers Russia has used to fire missiles at Ukraine, in what was described as “a black day for Russian long-range aviation” by a prominent, pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger. Moscow said that several aircraft were hit, but that the full extent of the damage has yet to be assessed.

The peace talks of recent weeks, the first since the early months of the war in 2022, have been clouded by political theatrics. Ukraine and Russia have attempted to set the tempo and terms of the talks without angering the White House, which has threatened to withdraw from the negotiations to end the war.

Trump has accused both sides of intransigence, trying to pressure them into negotiations. Last week, following a Russian attack on Kyiv, Trump lashed out at President Vladimir Putin, describing him on social media as having “gone absolutely CRAZY.” Trump said that he was considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia, but has not acted so far.

During the first round of talks in Istanbul in mid-May, top U.S. officials met with the Ukrainians and Russians separately, but left it to Turkey to mediate direct talks, making for a complicated diplomatic dance.

Afterward, the Ukrainians accused the Russians of issuing threats and provocations by saying they were ready to fight for many years and to invade more Ukrainian regions. The Russian delegation exuded confidence, saying that they were “satisfied with the results” of the talks, which they described as “organized at the initiative of Russia’s President.”

In recent days, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine dampened expectations for the new round of discussions, confirming only on Sunday afternoon that a Ukrainian delegation would travel to Istanbul.

He said on Monday that Kyiv’s delegation was “ready to take the necessary steps for peace” with Russia. In remarks from Lithuania ahead of a NATO meeting, Zelenskyy said that those steps should begin with “a ceasefire and humanitarian actions, the release of prisoners and the return of abducted children.”

Ukraine said it submitted to Russia on Monday a list of all Ukrainian children who were abducted. Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin who headed the Russian delegation, said Russia would study the list, while seeking to mock Ukrainian claims, saying that these children had not been kidnapped but “rescued from a war zone.” The list includes 339 names, he said.

Ukraine’s goal in the negotiations remains to secure a ceasefire first, before moving to negotiations for a broader peace deal. A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said its proposals included provisions for a ceasefire on land, at sea and in the air, with monitoring to be carried out by international partners.

Russia has signaled that it was not interested in a temporary ceasefire, but rather in solving the “root causes” of the war — Kremlin parlance for wide-ranging demands like a formal commitment to not expand NATO eastward, the recognition of its territorial gains, shrinking Ukraine’s military and other conditions that have been flatly rejected by Kyiv.

As with the first Istanbul meeting, the composition of the delegations — mostly government officials with little political leverage — suggested that Monday’s discussions remained limited in nature. The previous meeting yielded a large prisoner exchange but little else.

As Russia’s troops are pushing again on the battlefield, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Russia was not interested in peace and was participating in the negotiations only to avoid alienating the White House.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, said last week that security advisers from the United States and various European countries would also attend the talks. But on Monday, Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign minister, posted a picture on social media that showed part of the Ukrainian delegation meeting with what he said were representatives from European partners, Germany, Italy and the U.K.

American representatives were nowhere in sight.