Russia, Ukraine agree to swap dead and wounded troops in latest direct talks
發佈日期: 2025-06-03 19:56
TVB News
Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul Monday for a second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks.
Aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress towards ending the three-year-old war.
This as Russia's overnight attacks killed one person in Kharkiv and injured several others.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed Monday's second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine as very momentous.
The talks delivered no major breakthrough in peace efforts as Russia told Ukraine that it would only agree to end the war if Kyiv gives up big new chunks of territory and accepts limits on the size of its army.
But both sides agreed on an "all for all" exchange of seriously wounded and sick soldiers, as well as young soldiers under the age of 25.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustern Umerov:"On (the) release of prisoners of war, we agreed to focus on specific categories rather than numbers. We agreed to exchange all for all, seriously wounded and seriously sick prisoners of war. The second category is young soldiers who are from 18 to 25 years old, all for all. Also, we agreed to return 6,000 to 6,000 bodies of fallen soldiers."
At a briefing in Lithuania, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Turkish president had signalled to him of a possible four-leader meeting that would include Russian leader Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, Zelenskyy and Erdogan, which he supports.
Zelenskyy later met with several European leaders, including Poland's President Andrzej Duda and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, among others.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine has been invited to the NATO summit scheduled for June 24th to 25th in The Hague.
This as the Ukrainian Security Service said Sunday's drone attack on Russian military bases destroyed 34 percent of Russia's fleet of air missile carriers with damage estimated at 7 billion U.S. dollars.
Russia responded by pounding Ukraine with missiles and drones just hours before the new round of peace talks in Istanbul.
