Overview

• Talks lasted under an hour in Istanbul on July 23, producing an agreement to exchange 1,200 prisoners of war per side.
• Russia offered to return the bodies of 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers and proposed short 24–48-hour truces to allow medical teams to recover the wounded and dead.
• Ukraine renewed its call for a Zelenskiy-Putin summit by the end of August to unlock substantive ceasefire and settlement discussions.
• Both sides remain deadlocked on Russia’s demands for withdrawals from annexed regions, limits on Kyiv’s military and Ukraine’s insistence on an unconditional ceasefire.
• Russian forces continued advancing in Sumy region and stepped up heavy air and drone attacks on cities including Kyiv.