Russia again rejects ceasefire and ignores Putin-Zelensky meeting

MoscowStranded in a ceasefire and only able to reach agreements on humanitarian issues, the second round of talks between Russia and Ukraine has ended with little progress other thanthe first, on May 16Vladimir Putin's emissaries in Istanbul once again delayed discussions on an unconditional truce and ignored the request for a meeting between the Russian president and Volodymyr Zelensky. However, both sides have agreed to a new prisoner exchange, which would include all wounded and seriously ill prisoners, as well as all young people aged 18 to 25 who are being held captive.

The Russian delegation has once again ensured that Monday's meeting would not serve as a platform for discussing the conditions for a ceasefire. Moscow had refused to hand over its version of the peace memorandum, and therefore, during the meeting, which lasted just over an hour, both sides limited themselves to exchanging documents with their demands, despite the fact that the heads of the delegations, the Russian Vladimir Medinsky and the Ukrainian Vladimir Zelensky, had met with the delegations.

According to TASS, the Russian roadmap offers no new developments and includes the same unacceptable demands for Ukraine: that the West stop supplying weapons and military intelligence to Kiev, that the Ukrainian army withdraw troops from territories that Moscow rejects internationally, that Zelensky call elections no later than 100 days after lifting martial law, or that Ukraine become a neutral state.

Kiev, for its part, continues to support an unconditional ceasefire and regrets that Russia is demanding "another week to review any response." One of the Ukrainian negotiators, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergii Kilslitsia, believes that this implies de facto The Kremlin is once again refusing to stop the fighting.

The Ukrainian delegation has also insisted on pressing for a Putin-Zelensky meeting, a possibility that the leader of the Russian negotiators has not commented on in the media. Kiev's chief envoy did so in his statement. Ukraine maintains that "key problems can only be resolved at the leadership level" and therefore proposes that the delegations meet again between June 20 and 30 to prepare for such a meeting. It has even invited the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to participate. The invitation was seconded by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has expressed optimism about hosting the meeting.

New record exchange

As was the case after the initial direct talks, the two sides have only been able to agree on the exchange of prisoners. Umerov and Medinsky agreed on the exchange agreement in the "all for all" format, which includes seriously ill and wounded soldiers, and young soldiers between 18 and 25 years old. The Russian side claims that this is the largest prisoner exchange since World War II. Furthermore, each side will hand over the bodies of enemy soldiers killed in combat, specifically 6,000 for 6,000. Here, the Russian delegation proposed, somewhat disdainfully, "since the Ukrainian side constantly talks about a ceasefire," a two- or three-day truce at certain sections of the front so that commanders can remove the bodies of soldiers scattered across the battlefield. The Ukrainian president has already called the idea "idiotic."

Another humanitarian issue that has been addressed at the request of the Ukrainian side and that has generated considerable tension has been the cases of forcibly displaced Ukrainian minors in Russia. Zelensky has long demanded that these "kidnapped" children be returned home, and at the Istanbul meeting, the Kiev delegation handed the Russian representatives a list of children they demanded be handed over.

A source familiar with the talks explained to The Economist journalist Oliver Carroll that Vladimir Medinsky responded with these words: "Don't make a spectacle of childless elderly European women." According to the news website Axios, citing Ukrainian sources, Putin's envoy added: "Stop throwing around crazy figures. We will return everyone in the Russian Federation. There is no child abduction. Russian soldiers don't kidnap. They only saved them because their lives were in it." Axios reports that the Russian delegation has offered to return only ten children to Ukraine by June 10.

Later, speaking to reporters, Medinski assured that the list they received included 339 children, "not thousands or millions," and that they would work on each case. He reiterated that they were simply children "evacuated" because they were "between two fires" and that, if they had families, they had already been returned. And he gave figures: according to Medinski, the Russian side recently returned 101 children, while the Ukrainian side returned around twenty.

An attack that is more moral than critical.

The talks took place the day after the largest Ukrainian attack on Russian aircraft since the start of the war. Although the Ukrainian Special Services claimed to have destroyed 41 aircraft, Ukrainian sources lower the figure to 13, while the BBC Russian service estimates it to be 11. Therefore, it would have caused significant damage to the Russian nuclear triad, in addition to the undeniable moral blow, but it cannot be described as critical because it will not weaken nuclear deterrence or reduce the ability of the remaining aircraft to fire missiles at Ukraine.