(2 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Istanbul, Turkey – 2 June 2025
++AUDIO AS INCOMING++
1. Mid of Russian delegation walking to media
2. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vladimir Medinsky, Head of the Russian delegation:
“We have given our memorandum to the Ukrainian side, which consists of two parts. The first is how to achieve real long-term peace. And the second part is what steps to take to make a full-fledged ceasefire possible.”
++WHITE FLASH++
3. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vladimir Medinsky, Head of the Russian delegation:
“We are unilaterally handing over to the Ukrainian side 6,000 frozen bodies of dead Ukrainian soldiers and officers. They were stored at our side. We identified everything we could.”
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Rustem Umerov, Ukrainian Defense Minister:
"We shared our documents with the Russian side, but there has been no communication from them regarding their document until today. Only during the discussion today, Russia handed over its document to our delegation. Our teams will take a week to review the documents and then we can coordinate further steps."
++WHITE FLASH++
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Rustem Umerov, Ukrainian Defense Minister:
"Our proposal is an unconditional ceasefire in the air, sea and land, at least for 30 days. This position has remained unchanged for three months, and we consider it the basis for starting a peaceful resolution."
++ENDS ON A SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress toward ending the 3-year-old conflict, officials said.
The talks unfolded a day after a string of stunning long-range attacks by both sides, with Ukraine launching a devastating drone assault on Russian air bases and Russia hurling its largest drone attack of the war against Ukraine.
At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said.
After the talks, Russian state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured as a condition for a ceasefire.
As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilization efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities.
The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognize Russian as the country’s official language on par with Ukrainian.
Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow.
In other steps, the delegations agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action and to set up a commission to exchange seriously wounded troops.
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