War in Ukraine: Exchange of Prisoners without a Ceasefire

In the absence of Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, the first direct meeting between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in three years resulted in no major progress on Friday, 16 May. The possibility of a ceasefire was still discussed.

Meeting on Friday in Istanbul for their first peace talks since the spring of 2022, Russians and Ukrainians discussed a Zelensky-Putin meeting and agreed on an important exchange of prisoners, but not on a ceasefire, yet a "priority" of Kyiv, thus making little progress towards a resolution of the conflict.

The Russians and Ukrainians met again in Istanbul, where no ceasefire agreement was reached, but the parties agreed on an exchange of thousands of prisoners of war and the mutual development of ceasefire proposals.

Istanbul - In the absence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who ordered his army to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and who did not travel to Turkey, the hopes for substantial progress were slim.

After two hours of discussion, the Russian and Ukrainian delegations left the room. Umerov: We reached an agreement to change 1,000 prisoners. Zelenski and European leaders called on Trump. They spoke for two hours, almost in the same language, but did not understand. The Ukrainian and Russian delegations met before the first time in 2022. The Lord of the talks was Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan. The Ukrainian delegation was led by the Mi…

VATICAN CITY- A delegation of Ukrainian believers led by the leader of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, has given Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican a list of Ukrainian prisoners of war who are being held in Russia so that the new pontiff will measure for their release“My heart is with the suffering and beloved people of Ukraine. Let us do everything we can to achieve a real, just and lasting peace as soon as possible. And let …