U.S. President Donald Trump is “open” to meeting his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in Turkey, the White House said, after the two sides failed on Monday, June 2nd, to make headway towards an elusive ceasefire.
Delegations from both sides did, however, agree to another large-scale prisoner exchange in their meeting in Istanbul, which in mid-May also hosted their first round of face-to-face talks.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump come together for a third round later this month in either Istanbul or Ankara.
Putin has so far refused such a meeting. But Zelensky has said he is willing, underlining that key issues can only be resolved at leaders-level.
Trump, who wants a swift end to the three-year war, is “open” to a three-way summit “if it comes to that, but he wants both of these leaders and both sides to come to the table together,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in Washington.
In Monday’s meeting, Ukraine said that Moscow had rejected its call for an unconditional ceasefire. It offered instead a partial truce of two to three days in some areas of the frontline.
Russia will only agree to a full ceasefire if Ukrainian troops pull back entirely from four regions— Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russia currently only partly controls those regions.
Moscow has also demanded a ban on Kyiv joining NATO, limiting Ukraine’s military, and ending Western military support.
Top negotiators from both sides, however, agreed to swap all severely wounded soldiers and captured fighters under the age of 25.
Russia’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky said it would involve “at least 1,000” on each side.
The two sides also agreed to hand over the bodies of 6,000 soldiers, Ukraine said after the talks.
