Putin has laid out his demands. They reveal a mountainous wedge between Moscow and Kyiv

The United States and Turkey-brokered negotiations at the Ciragan Palace on the banks of the Bosphorus in Istanbul appeared to bring the sides no closer to a truce.

Ukraine and Russia, however, agreed to an exchange of 6000 bodies of fallen soldiers, as well as an “all-for-all” swap of seriously wounded and injured prisoners of war and captured servicemen aged under 25.

The Russians offered a series of smaller, localised truces across the front lines to allow for the collection of corpses. This, however, appeared to be rejected by Ukraine, as a senior military figure told The Telegraph that Russia had previously used similar pauses to prepare for fresh assaults.

Both sides could not bridge the divides on a 30-day ceasefire being pushed by Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Donald Trump.

Despite the lack of progress, the US president said on Monday he was open to holding talks with his Ukrainian counterpart and Putin.

Ukrainian officials had been waiting weeks for the Russian peace proposals to be published, but these documents were made available only as talks started in Istanbul.

Read side-by-side, the two memorandums reveal a mountainous wedge between their opposing positions.

Russia’s demands appeared almost identical to the set of proposals put forward in the early months of the full-scale invasion, which were ultimately rejected by Zelensky as a capitulation.

The Russian terms of surrender for Ukraine were published by Russian state media hours after the talks were wrapped up in Turkey.

Kyiv’s proposed route to a ceasefire, and ultimately a fuller peace deal, including security guarantees to prevent another Russian invasion, no international recognition of Moscow’s occupation of Ukrainian territories and no restriction on Kyiv’s armed forces.

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A Ukrainian official familiar with the talks described them as “unproductive” and branded Moscow’s demands as unacceptable.

The two delegations entered a large conference at the Ciragan Palace without exchanging handshakes or pleasantries.

The Russians, led by Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky, appeared stony-faced as they positioned themselves around the U-shaped table, after Ukraine mounted an audacious drone attack on Moscow’s fleet of strategic bomber warplanes.

At one moment in the hour-long talks, Medinsky accused the Ukrainians of “putting on a show” after they handed over a list of hundreds of Ukrainian children they wanted returned from Russia.

“Do not put on a show for European tender-hearted aunties who do not have children themselves,” he said, according to a quote shared with The Telegraph by a member of the negotiating team.

A Ukrainian source familiar with the talks told The Telegraph that Russia made a counter-proposal to return just 10 children.

“Ukraine brought forward a list with more than 300 children requesting their return,” the official said.

“Should Russia have agreed to this request and returned those children, that would provide Ukraine with more confidence that Russia is interested in the humanitarian component of peace negotiations”.

The Russian negotiator later claimed his country would return children to Ukraine if their parents or legal guardians could be identified.

Putin released his demands a day after the most embarrassing security lapse of the war led to dozens of Russian strategic bombers being destroyed.

Ukraine’s domestic security agency, the SBU, said that as many as 40 warplanes – worth $US7 billion ($11 billion) and amounting to 34 per cent of Russia’s strategic cruise missile carriers – had been destroyed in a sophisticated clandestine drone operation deep inside Russian territory.

The attack will hamper Moscow’s ability to bomb Ukraine safely from a distance and dent its nuclear strike capabilities.

The Telegraph, London

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