One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement. The Kremlin has pushed back against such a truce, which remains elusive.

“We haven’t received a Russian ‘yes’ on this basic point,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhii said after the talks. “If you want to have serious negotiations, you have to have guns silenced.”

But Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky pronounced himself “satisfied with the outcome,” adding that Moscow was ready to continue contacts.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he discussed the talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of France, Germany, the U.K. and Poland. In a post on X from a European leadership meeting in Albania, he urged “tough sanctions” against Moscow if it rejects “a full and unconditional ceasefire and an end to killings.”

In Istanbul, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such swap.

Both sides also discussed a ceasefire and a meeting between their heads of state, according to chief Ukrainian delegate, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said both sides agreed to provide each other with detailed ceasefire proposals, with Ukraine requesting the heads of state meeting, which Russia took under consideration.

“The pressure on the Russian Federation must continue,” said Serhii Kyslytsia, Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister and part of Kyiv’s delegation. “We should not really relax at this point.”

New, ‘unacceptable conditions’

During the talks, a senior Ukrainian official said Russia introduced new, “unacceptable demands” to withdraw Ukrainian forces from huge swaths of territory. The official, who was not authorized to make official statements, spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The proposal had not been previously discussed, the official said.

The Ukrainian side reiterated it was focused on achieving real progress — an immediate ceasefire and a pathway to substantive diplomacy — “just like the U.S., European partners, and other countries proposed,” the official added.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Tykhii confirmed the Russian delegation “voiced a number of things that we deem unacceptable,” but added: “This is something that Russians usually voice, and we were keeping to our line.”

The two sides sat opposite each other at a U-shaped table in the Dolmabahce Palace but remained far apart in their conditions for ending the war. Trump, who has pressed for an end to the conflict, said he would meet with Putin “as soon as we can set it up.”

“I think it’s time for us to just do it,” Trump told reporters in Abu Dhabi as he wrapped up a trip to the Middle East.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan opened the talks by urging participants “to take advantage of this opportunity,” adding it was “critically important that the ceasefire happens as soon as possible.”

In a social media post, Fidan called the POW swap as a “confidence-building measure” and said the parties had agreed in principle to meet again.

Zelenskyy seeks European unity

Zelenskyy was in Tirana, Albania, with leaders of 47 European countries to discuss security, defense and democratic standards against the backdrop of the war. He met with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

“Pressure on Russia must be maintained until Russia is ready to end the war,” Zelenskyy said on X, posting a photo of the leaders during the call, the second for the group since May 10.

Speaking to reporters after the call with Trump, Starmer said the Russian position “is clearly unacceptable.”

While he didn’t say what the Europeans’ response might involve, some of them pressed for new sanctions, with the European Union likely to adopt new measures as soon as Tuesday.

Macron said it was “unacceptable that, for a second time, Russia hasn’t responded to the demands made by the Americans, supported by Ukraine and the Europeans. No ceasefire, and therefore no meeting at a decision-making level. And no response.”

Merz said diplomatic efforts so far “have unfortunately failed because of Russia’s lack of readiness to take the first steps in the right direction now.”

“But we will not give up,” he added. All three said Kyiv and its allies in Europe will continue to coordinate their efforts.

Diplomatic maneuvering

Both countries engaged in diplomatic maneuvering this week as they tried to show Trump that they are eager to negotiate, although he expressed frustration with the slow progress and threatened to punish foot-dragging.

On Thursday, Putin spurned an offer by Zelenskyy to meet face-to-face in Turkey. Zelenskyy accused Moscow of not making a serious effort to end the war by sending a low-level delegation.

Ukraine has accepted a U.S. and European proposal for a full, 30-day ceasefire, but Putin has effectively rejected it by imposing far-reaching conditions.

Commenting on a possible Trump-Putin meeting, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to indicate that momentum for such a summit is building. He told reporters that top-level talks were “certainly needed,” but added that preparing a summit would take time.

Fighting continues in Ukraine

Russia, meanwhile, is preparing a fresh military offensive, Ukrainian government and Western military analysts say.

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov was in Minsk to discuss joint military drills in September and deliveries of new weapons to Belarus. Zelenskyy has warned that the military buildup in Belarus, which borders NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, could serve as a cover for future attacks.

A Friday drone attack on the northeastern city of Kupiansk killed a 55-year-old woman and wounded four men, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration..

Russia’s invasion has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, the U.N. says, and razed towns and villages. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died, and likely a larger number of Russian troops, officials and analysts say.

One Ukrainian soldier told AP he wasn’t hopeful about the talks.

“I don’t think they will agree on anything concrete, because summer is the best time for war,” said the soldier, who used the call sign “Corsair” in accordance with Ukrainian military rules. “The enemy is trying to constantly escalate the situation.”

But he said many of his comrades “believe that by the end of the year there will be peace, albeit an unstable one, but peace.”

Before the talks, Ukrainian officials met with national security advisers from the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K. to coordinate positions, the senior Ukrainian official told AP. The U.S. team was led by retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, while Umerov and presidential office chief Andriy Yermak represented Ukraine, the official said.

A three-way meeting between Turkey, the U.S. and Ukraine also took place, Turkish Foreign Ministry officials said. The U.S. side included Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well as Kellogg.

On Thursday, Rubio said he believed a breakthrough was only possible is a meeting between Trump and Putin.

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Russia and the United States have carried out an unexpected prisoner exchange in a time of high tensions, trading a Marine veteran jailed by Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America.

The deal announced by both countries involving Trevor Reed, an American imprisoned for nearly three years, would have been a notable diplomatic maneuver even in times of peace. It was all the more surprising because it was done as Russia’s war with Ukraine has driven relations with the U.S. to their lowest point in decades.

The U.S., for its part, returned Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot who’d been serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. after he was arrested in Liberia in 2010 and extradited to the U.S. The Justice Department has described him as “an experienced international drug trafficker” who conspired to distribute thousands of kilograms of cocaine around the world.

Despite Reed’s release, other Americans remain jailed in Russia, including WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan.

The exchange took place in Turkey, Reed’s father, Joey Reed, told CNN.

“The American plane pulled up next to the Russian plane and they walked both prisoners across at the same time, like you see in the movies,” he said.

The swap seemed unlikely to herald any larger breakthrough between Washington and Moscow. A senior Biden administration official cautioned that the negotiations centered on a “discrete set of prisoner issues” and did not represent a change to the U.S. government’s condemnation of Russia’s violence against Ukraine.

“Where we can have discussions on issues of mutual interest we will try to talk to the Russians and have a constructive conversation without any way changing our approach to the appalling violence in Ukraine,” the official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the administration.

President Joe Biden, who met in Washington with Reed’s parents last month, trumpeted Reed’s release and noted without elaboration that “the negotiations that allowed us to bring Trevor home required difficult decisions that I do not take lightly.” The Russian foreign ministry described the exchange as the “result of a long negotiation process.”

Reed, a 30-year-old former Marine from Texas, was arrested in the summer of 2019 after Russian authorities said he assaulted an officer while being driven by police to a police station following a night of heavy drinking. He was later sentenced to nine years in prison, though his family maintained his innocence and the U.S. government described him as unjustly detained and expressed concern about his declining health.

A lawyer for Yaroshenko, who last year sought a reduced prison sentence because of Yaroshenko’s vulnerability to COVID-19, did not immediately return an email seeking comment Wednesday.

Russia had sought Yaroshenko’s return for years while also rejecting entreaties by high-level U.S. officials to release Reed, who was approaching his 1,000th day in custody and whose health had recently been worsening, according to his family.

A senior U.S. official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity, described Reed’s case as one of “utmost priority” for the Biden administration. His family said Reed’s poor health included symptoms of tuberculosis.

“It was a difficult decision but one that we thought was worth it,” the official said.

Though officials would not say where the transfer took place, in the hours before it happened commercial flight trackers identified a plane belonging to Russia’s federal security service as flying to Ankara, Turkey. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons also updated its website overnight to reflect that Yaroshenko was no longer in custody.

Reed was en route back to the U.S., traveling with Roger Cartsens, the U.S. government’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

“Today, our prayers have been answered and Trevor is on his way back safely to the United States,” Reed’s family said in a statement.

The prisoner swap was the most prominent release during the Biden administration of an American deemed wrongly detained abroad and came even as families of detainees who have met over the last year with administration officials had described the officials as cool to the idea of an exchange.

The U.S. government does not typically embrace such exchanges for fear that it might encourage foreign governments to take additional Americans as prisoners as a way to extract concessions and to avoid a potential false equivalency between an unjustly detained American — which U.S. officials believe Reed was — and a properly convicted criminal.

In this case, though, the U.S. decided the deal made sense in part because Yaroshenko had already served a long portion of his prison sentence, which has now been commuted.

The Reed family thanked Biden “for making the decision to bring Trevor home” as well as other administration officials and Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who the family said traveled to Moscow in the hours before the Ukraine war began in hopes of securing Reed’s release.

The Reed family had also been working with a consultant, Jonathan Franks, who has been involved in other high-profile releases, such as the case of Michael White, a Navy veteran freed from Iran in 2020.

Reed’s release had no immediate impact on the cases of other Americans held by Russia. Griner, for one, was detained in February after Russian authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative. Whelan is being held on espionage-related charges his family says are bogus.

U.S. officials have described Whelan as unjustly detained, and Biden said Wednesday “we won’t stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”

Reed’s parents demonstrated outside the White House last month in hopes of getting a meeting with the president.

“We believe that that meeting with the president is what made it happen” Joey Reed told CNN. “Which is what we had said all along — if we could just speak to the president, he’s that kind of person.”

When he is reunited with his son, the father said, “I want to hug him and not let him go.”

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