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LAST UPDATE | 2 Jun
DELEGATIONS FROM RUSSIA and Ukraine have gathered in Turkey for a second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, although expectations are low for any significant progress on ending the three-year war.
The meeting in Istanbul comes after a string of major attacks over the weekend.
Ukraine said on Sunday that it had launched a spectacular surprise attack on five Russian air bases, ranging from targets close to Moscow to Russia’s Arctic, Siberia and Far East.
The targets were more than 4,300 miles from Ukraine.
More than 40 Russian warplanes were destroyed, Ukraine claimed, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called a “brilliant operation” that involved more than a year of planning.
Also on Sunday, Russia launched its biggest number of drones — 472 — on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defences.
US-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have failed. Ukraine accepted that step, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed late on Sunday that “Russia is attempting to delay negotiations and prolong the war in order to make additional battlefield gains”.
Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on key conditions for stopping the war.
The first round of talks on May 16, also in Istanbul, ended after less than two hours. While both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, there was no breakthrough.
The Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul for Monday’s meeting is led by defence minister Rustem Umerov, according to Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Moscow’s delegation, headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, arrived on Sunday evening, Russian state media reported.
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan is presiding over the talks with officials from the Turkish intelligence agency also present.
Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 620-mile front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.
Russian air defences downed 162 Ukrainian drones over eight Russian regions overnight, as well as over the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday.
Ukrainian air defenscs damaged 52 out of 80 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian air force said.
Two ballistic missiles struck a residential neighbourhood in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Monday morning, including one that hit near a school, the city’s mayor said.
One missile landed near an apartment building, while the second struck a road near the school, Ihor Terekhov said in a statement with a photo of a wide crater.
“Standing next to the crater, you realise how different it all could have been,” he wrote. “A few more metres — and it would have hit the building. A few more minutes — and cars, buses would have been on the road.”
No casualties were reported.
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