ISTANBUL: Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met Monday in Turkey for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but the discussion lasted only slightly more than an hour and produced no major progress toward ending the 3-year-old war, officials said. The talks unfolded a day after a string of stunning long-range attacks by both sides, with Ukraine launching a devastating drone assault on Russian air bases and Russia hurling its largest drone attack of the war against Ukraine. At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memo setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said. Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said. The memo was not made public. In other steps, the delegations agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action and set up a commission to exchange seriously wounded troops. Kyiv officials said a surprise drone attack Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine. The complex and unprecedented raid, which struck simultaneously in three time zones, took over a year and a half to prepare and was “a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power,” said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service, who led its planning. Zelenskyy called it a “brilliant operation” that would go down in history. The effort destroyed or heavily damaged nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine. Hopes low for peace prospects U.S.-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted the proposed truce, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war. The previous talks on May 16 in the same Turkish city were the first direct peace negotiations since the early weeks of Moscow’s 2022 invasion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the fact that the two sides met again Monday was an achievement in itself amid the fierce fighting. “The fact that the meeting took place despite yesterday’s incident is an important success in itself,” he said in a televised speech. Zelenskyy said during a trip to Lithuania on Monday that a new release of prisoners of war was being prepared after the Istanbul meeting. The May 16 talks also led to a swap of prisoners, with 1,000 on both sides being exchanged. Ukraine also handed Russia an official list of children it says were forcibly deported and must be returned, said Andriy Yermak, head of Zelenskyy’s office.
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