Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met in Istanbul today for their third session. Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Russia’s team, was reported by TASS to have said: “Naturally, we held a long discussion of the positions that our countries set out in the memorandums we had exchanged. Our positions are quite far apart but we agreed to maintain contact.”
Further: “In order to save time and taxpayer money, we offered to form three working groups under our delegation, which will work online.... There will be working groups on political, humanitarian and military issues, which will include experts from military agencies.” No decision was made on this, but he said that Ukraine agreed to consider the proposal.
Otherwise, he declared that the two sides have completed the second major swap of prisoners of war, exchanging “about 1,200 individuals” each. Further, he said that Moscow would return to Kiev another 3,000 bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers. He went on: “Guided by a moral belief that fallen soldiers should be buried in their homeland, we sent over 7,000 bodies back to Ukraine.” And, in return, Russia “received a small number of bodies.” The next 3,000 would be handed over as “soon as Kiev is technically ready to receive the bodies....”
Regarding Kiev’s call for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy, Medinsky said: “In order for such a meeting to take place, the terms of an agreement need to be developed so it’s clear to the parties what to discuss at the meeting. In fact, such meetings are not for discussing agreements but for signing them. There is no point meeting to discuss everything from scratch.”
