SAO PAULO, SP (Folhapress)-The authorities of Ukraine and Russia who are in Istanbul to try to negotiate the end of the Eastern European war agreed to meet again, said Turkey Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Friday (16). A ceasefire agreement, however, was not reached.
According to the chancellor, who measured the negotiations, both sides will change a thousand prisoners of war and share their conditions for a truce in writing. “We will continue to make every effort to make it possible to achieve lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine,” Fidan wrote on social network X.
The situation behind the scenes does not seem to be as optimistic as the minister’s tone, however. Russia said it was ready to continue conversations, but, according to Reuters, a Turkish authority said no schedule for the next round of negotiations was agreed.
In addition, a Ukrainian employee told the news agency that Moscow made ultimates for Ukraine to withdraw from parts of his own territory to obtain a ceasefire. British Prime Minister Keir Strmer said the Russian position was “clearly unacceptable” and that European leaders, Ukraine and the United States were “closely aligning” their answers.
Russia sees current negotiations as a continuation of the conversations of the first weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul. At the time, Moscow required Ukraine to dramatically cut its military staff, to give up part of its territory, to abandon its ambitions to join NATO, the Western Military Alliance, and become a neutral country.
According to Zelenski’s cabinet chief Andri Yermak, the attempt to align new negotiations with the previous ones, which were unsuccessful, would fail. In 2022, Ukraine rejected the terms for considering them equivalent to a surrender and began to seek security guarantees in the future from world powers, especially the US.
As soon as the meeting ended, after less than two hours, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski talked by phone with US President Donald Trump and France, Germany and Poland leaders, the leader spokesman said.
Moscow’s main negotiator, Vladimir Medinski, told reporters that his team had noted the Ukrainian request for direct conversations between Zelenski and his Russian homologist Vladimir Putin.
“We agree that each side will present its view of a possible future ceasefire and detail it. After the presentation of this vision, we believe it would be appropriate, as also agreed, to continue our negotiations,” said Medinski.
Zelenski even traveled to Türkiye on Thursday (15), but, given the absence of the Russian homologist, decided not to participate in the negotiations. The president had challenged Putin to meet earlier this week, but Moscow, after days of silence, chose to send a second -level delegation to the Turkish city.
The Ukrainian and his European allies have also been failing while trying to establish a 30 -day ceasefire since Saturday (10) -This Friday, Russia said it had captured another village in eastern Ukraine. Minutes before the meeting began in Istanbul, the Ukrainian press reported an air warning and explosions in the city of Dnipro.
As retaliation, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the bloc was working on a new package of sanctions against Moscow.
Already low, the expectations of the meeting were even more shaken on Thursday (15), when Trump, when ending a trip to the Middle East, said there would be no movement without a meeting between him and Putin. Earlier this Friday, Kremlin stated that the meeting was necessary, but required considerable prior preparation and needed to produce results.
Prior to conversations between the delegations, the head of American diplomacy, Marco Rubio, spoke to his Ukrainian and Turkish counterparts and “reiterated US stance that it is necessary to end the massacre,” said Tammy Bruce, spokesman for the US State Department.
The negotiation teams sat face to face, with the Russians dressed in suit and half of the Ukrainians of military uniform. An employee told Reuters that Ukrainians spoke in their own language through an interpreter.
Two people said Russia rejected a request from Ukraine so that American representatives were in the room, and two others said Medinski stated that Russia was ready to continue fighting for the time it was necessary, drawing a historic parallel with the wars of Czar Pedro, the Great, which lasted 21 years in the early 1700s.
