{"id":14590,"date":"2025-07-24T03:04:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T03:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=14590"},"modified":"2025-07-24T03:04:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T03:04:01","slug":"russia-ukraine-begin-talks-in-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=14590","title":{"rendered":"Russia, Ukraine begin talks in Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"
Russia and Ukraine began a fresh round of talks in Istanbul on Wednesday but the Kremlin played down any expectations of a breakthrough after three and a half years of war.<\/p>\n

“Our aim is to end this bloody war, which has a very high cost, as soon as possible,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said as he opened a meeting between the two delegations.<\/p>\n

“The ultimate goal is a ceasefire that will pave the way for peace,” Fidan said.<\/p>\n

The two sides previously met in the Turkish city in May and June, but managed to agree only on exchanges of prisoners and soldiers’ bodies.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump last week gave Russia 50 days to end the war or face sanctions, but the Kremlin has not indicated it is willing to compromise.<\/p>\n

“No one expects an easy road. It will be very difficult,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about his expectations for the talks.<\/p>\n

Ukraine said it hoped the two countries would discuss the release of prisoners and lay the ground for a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

“Everything will depend on whether Russia stops speaking in ultimatums and takes a constructive position,” a source in the Ukrainian delegation told AFP.<\/p>\n

“This will determine whether results can be achieved at this meeting.”<\/p>\n

But Moscow has said a lot of work is needed before even discussions can take place about possible talks between Putin and Zelensky, who last met in 2019.<\/p>\n

The two sides have radically different positions for ending the conflict.<\/p>\n

Russia has called on Ukraine to effectively retreat from the four Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed in September 2022, a demand Kyiv has called unacceptable.<\/p>\n

Ukraine has ruled out any negotiations on territory until after a ceasefire and says it will never recognise Russia’s claims over occupied territory — including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.<\/p>\n

Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.<\/p>\n

Ukraine said former defence minister Rustem Umerov, who currently serves as security council secretary, would head its delegation.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin said it would send political scientist Vladimir Medinsky to lead its negotiating team.<\/p>\n

Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation in the two previous rounds of negotiation, is not seen as a powerful decision maker. Ukraine has labelled him a puppet.<\/p>\n

At the last talks on May 16 and June 2, the two sides agreed to large-scale prisoner exchanges.<\/p>\n

They also exchanged their draft terms for ending the conflict, which the Kremlin said were “diametrically opposed”.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia and Ukraine began a fresh round of talks in Istanbul on Wednesday but the Kremlin played down any expectations of a breakthrough after three and a half years of war. “Our aim is to end this bloody war, which has a very high cost, as soon as possible,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}