What to know about the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks

Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul on Monday for peace talks, the second round of negotiations since the adversaries resumed a direct dialogue two weeks ago.

The discussions appeared to produce few results beyond an agreement to exchange some prisoners and the bodies of fallen soldiers. The two sides met for less than 90 minutes at a hotel on the European side of the Bosporus, a day after the two countries traded some of the most intense air attacks of the war.

Ukraine had shared its peace terms with Moscow before the meeting, but Russia presented its terms only during Monday’s talks, officials from both countries said. The Ukrainian delegation said it would need a week to review Moscow’s proposal, delaying further discussion.

Russia and Ukraine spoke under pressure from President Donald Trump, who has alternatively cajoled and chided the leaders of both countries.

Here’s what you need to know about the ceasefire talks.

What happened in the latest talks?

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 25 years old. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said 1,000 prisoners would be returned by each side. Both sides also announced an agreement to exchange the bodies of 6,000 soldiers each.

Substantive negotiations toward a peace agreement were complicated by the two sides’ entrenched positions.

After the talks ended, Russian state news agencies published Moscow’s peace terms, which have been flatly rejected by Kyiv. They included demands that Ukraine recognize Russia’s territorial gains, shrink its military, designate Russian as Ukraine’s official language and formally commit to Ukrainian neutrality, which would rule out joining NATO.

In a separate section, the proposal stipulated that Russia would agree to a ceasefire only if Ukraine withdrew its troops from four regions claimed by Moscow, stopped mobilizing troops and receiving weapons from abroad, and refrained from committing acts of sabotage against Russia, among other conditions.

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. But Umerov also made it clear that Ukraine believes progress toward a peace settlement requires a meeting between the two countries’ presidents.

The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, but Zelenskyy said the Russian side had agreed to discuss the idea. He also said that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was pushing for a four-way meeting with him, Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy.

Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, would not say whether the Russians would return for another round of talks.

What happened in earlier talks?

At the first Istanbul meeting in mid-May, both sides agreed to conduct a large prisoner swap, and to write up and share with each other the conditions for a possible ceasefire.

After those talks, Trump and Putin of Russia spoke for about two hours by phone. Trump backed off his demand that Russia declare an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, instead endorsing Putin’s call for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

Putin made it clear that he was not budging from his demands and that Russia was not on the verge of declaring a ceasefire. He maintained in his own remarks that any deal must “remove the root causes of this crisis” — a reference to Russia’s demand for wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.

Trump later told reporters that he expected to see progress in the talks soon, but that if he did not, he was “just going to back away.” Then, after a Russian attack on Kyiv, Trump lashed out at Putin, saying that “he has gone absolutely CRAZY” and that Trump was considering imposing additional sanctions on Russia. So far, Trump has not acted on any of his threats.

What’s at stake?

The largest land war in Europe since World War II, which began after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, has taken a heavy toll in lives, physical destruction and economic hardship. It has prompted much of the West to isolate Russia diplomatically and commercially, while also undermining European economies.

Both Ukraine and Russia have been maneuvering to set the terms and tempo of peace negotiations, while simultaneously trying to win over the White House amid its threats to abandon talks altogether.

Zelenskyy wants an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, followed by negotiations over a potential peace deal. But Putin, who appears confident of Russia’s upper hand on the battlefield, is refusing to stop fighting before he secures major concessions from Kyiv and the West.

Putin also wants to keep the attention of Trump, who is promising a new era of warm ties between Moscow and Washington, and to convince the White House that he is not stonewalling the peace in Ukraine that Trump promised as a presidential candidate.

But the Russian leader is also still seeking Ukraine’s capitulation, both on the battlefield and in negotiations, after more than three years of full-scale war that has come to define his rule.

What is Russia’s position?

When Putin and other Russian leaders talk about ending the war, they focus on what they call the “root causes” of the conflict — Kremlin shorthand for a range of issues including the existence of Ukraine as a fully independent and sovereign nation aligned with the West.

Specifically, the Kremlin says it wants control over five Ukrainian territories, including large areas of land it has failed to seize despite the years of war. Putin has also demanded that Ukraine agree to strict limitations on its military, and to not join NATO.

From the start, the Istanbul negotiations were not expected to yield any huge breakthroughs. But the meetings have served as a tactical win for Putin, who managed to start the talks without first agreeing to the ceasefire that Ukraine and almost all of its Western backers had sought as a precondition for negotiations.

What is Ukraine’s position?

Before Monday’s talks, Ukraine said it had submitted its own peace terms to both Russia and the United States. But Russia said it would only share its memorandum during the new round of negotiations, prompting Ukraine to accuse it of slow-walking the peace process.

Kyiv’s goal 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.

With Russia holding the initiative on the front for more than 16 months, many Ukrainians have concluded that they are unlikely to drive the Russians off their lands militarily. And so Ukraine wants to freeze the fighting where it is and then make a case that any formal recognition of Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian lands would violate basic tenets of international law and set a dangerous precedent.

Ukraine has also said it will not accept any limitations on its military.

Who are the negotiators?

The composition of the delegations — mostly government officials with limited political leverage — suggested that Monday’s discussions remained technical in nature.

Zelenskyy, who in recent days dampened expectations for the discussions, said Monday that Kyiv’s delegation in Istanbul was “ready to take the necessary steps for peace” in talks with Russia.” But if the Istanbul talks yield nothing, Zelenskyy added, “strong, new sanctions are urgently, urgently needed” from both the European Union and from the United States.

Kyiv’s 14-member delegation was led by the Ukrainian defense minister, Rustem Umerov.

Russia’s delegation was led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin. After the previous round of talks, Medinsky, a conservative historian, told Russian state television that “as a rule, as Napoleon said, war and negotiations take place at the same time.”

What is happening on the battlefield?

As negotiations sputter, attacks on the battlefield have intensified.

The Russian army appears to be launching a new offensive, advancing at the fastest pace since last fall and opening a new front in the northern Sumy region. 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 Sunday.

Ukraine responded with an ambitious, coordinated attack Sunday — apparently launched from within Russia — that struck air bases as far away as Siberia.

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. A prominent, pro-Kremlin Russian military blogger described the attack as “a black day for Russian long-range aviation.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company