So far, 2 rounds of renewed direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been held in Turkish metropolis
The Turkish metropolis of Istanbul gears up for renewed diplomacy as it will host a new round of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address Monday evening that a new round of Kyiv-Moscow peace talks will be held in Türkiye on Wednesday.
His remarks came hours after telling Ukrainian ambassadors in Kyiv that the agenda of the talks for Ukraine includes the return of prisoners and preparation for a leaders’ meeting, among other issues, amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year.
The following day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a press briefing in the Russian capital that Moscow hopes the next round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks will take place this week.
Expressing that Russia does not expect "breakthroughs of the miraculous kind" at the talks, Peskov described the topic of the negotiations to be “quite complex.” He later confirmed on Wednesday that the talks would take place in the evening in Istanbul.
Moscow’s delegation at the talks will be led once again by Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, while Kyiv’s delegation will be led by Rustem Umerov, who was appointed as Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council during a major Cabinet reshuffle last week.
The upcoming talks will be the latest in a series of renewed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine facilitated by Türkiye, which has already hosted two rounds of talks between both sides of the conflict within the past two months.
- Previous negotiations
Istanbul has so far hosted two rounds of renewed peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, which have taken place on May 16 and June 2.
During the first round of talks held in Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace, both sides notably reached what was then the largest prisoner swap of the over three-year-long conflict in Ukraine, which involved 1,000 prisoners from each side.
Three phases of prisoner swaps were subsequently conducted by the two sides to fulfill the deal reached in Istanbul on exchanging 1,000 prisoners.
The Russian and Ukrainian delegations also agreed that both Moscow and Kyiv will present each other with their vision of a future peace deal through peace memoranda.
Two weeks later, another round of peace talks between the two countries, held this time in Istanbul’s Ciragan Palace, resulted in both sides agreeing to exchange additional prisoners of war -- prioritizing the youngest and most severely wounded -- and to return the bodies of 6,000 soldiers from each side.
Moscow and Kyiv also conducted an exchange of memoranda, as agreed on during the first round of negotiations.
According to its memorandum for the settlement of the conflict, Moscow has demanded a ban on Kyiv joining military alliances and withdrawal of Ukraine's troops from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions that it annexed after a referendum in September 2022, among others.
Ukraine has described the terms as an "ultimatum" and called for a ceasefire as a prerequisite for meaningful talks in its own memorandum handed to the Russian side.
Following the second round of talks, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered to hold a summit involving the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, as well as the US, turning Istanbul into a "center of peace."
- What to expect
A third round of Moscow-Kyiv negotiations comes amid major deals reached in previous renewed talks, particularly on the humanitarian track.
“We can be reasonably confident that there will be some humanitarian wins during this round of talks, as this has already been discussed between the teams,” Maksym Skrypchenko, the president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, a think tank based in Kyiv, told Anadolu in an interview.
Skrypchenko further said there are also signals that existing progress on the humanitarian track may be used as a foundation to introduce new de-escalatory steps to help bring the ongoing conflict to an end.
With regards to the memoranda exchanged by Moscow and Kyiv during their latest talks, Skrypchenko argued that the documents swapped demonstrate just how far apart both countries are from a mutually agreeable peace deal.
He also argued that a leaders’ meeting is “likely only necessary for a breakthrough once the foundational positions have moved closer together,” adding: “The substance of the proposals must evolve first."
