Overview

• Third round of Turkey-mediated talks lasted only 40 minutes at Istanbul’s Çırağan Palace under Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s chairmanship.
• Delegations led by Rustem Umerov and Vladimir Medinsky agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners of war and civilians apiece.
• Both sides acknowledged that their positions on a comprehensive ceasefire remain distant and made no new truce agreement.
• Russia proposed 24–48-hour humanitarian pauses on the front line for medical evacuations and body retrievals, which Ukraine has not accepted.
• Negotiators will continue drafting competing peace memoranda to pave the way for a potential Zelensky-Putin summit by the end of August.