Russia, Ukraine meet for latest peace talks as both launch attacks – National

Delegations Russia and Ukraine met Turkiye on Monday for the second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, although expectations were low for any significant progress by finishing the three-year war after a series of astonishing attacks during the weekend.

The Ukrainian delegation was led by the Minister of Defense, Rustem Umerov, said officials. Vladimir Medinsky, assistant to the Russian chief Vladimir Putin, led the Kremlin team, reported the Russian state media.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan chaired the talks at the Ciragan Palace in the city and delivered an opening speech to mark their departure.

Recent comments of senior officials in the two countries indicate that they remain distant under key conditions to stop the war.

Ukraine said on Sunday that it launched a spectacular surprise attack on four Russian air bases thousands of kilometers (Miles), destroying more than 40 war planes. The raid was unprecedented in its scope and geographical scope, targeting the bases in the Arctic of Russia, Siberia and the Far East at more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) of Ukraine.

The head of the Ukrainian security service, Vasyl Maliuk, who led the planning of the operation, said that his success was “a major slap in front of the military power of Russia”. He said that drones hit three time zones simultaneously and that complex logistics took more than a year and a half to prepare.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called this “brilliant operation”.

Meanwhile, Russia drew the greatest number of drones on Sunday – 472 – in Ukraine since its large -scale invasion in February 2022, said Ukraine Air Force, in an apparent effort to overwhelm the air defenses. It was part of a recently growing strike campaign in the civil regions of Ukraine.

Efforts led by the United States to push both parties to accept a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted this stage, but the Kremlin actually rejected it.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington -based reflection group, said on Sunday that “Russia is trying to delay negotiations and prolong the war in order to make additional gains on the battlefield”.

The relentless fighting has frustrated the goal of US President Donald Trump to end the war quickly. A week ago, he expressed his impatience with Russian President Vladimir Putin while Moscow beat kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third consecutive night. Trump said on social networks that Putin “has gone absolutely crazy!”

High officials from the two countries have indicated that the two parties remain distant under key conditions to stop the war.

The first series of talks, held on May 16, also in Istanbul, ended after less than two hours. While the two parties agreed on a large exchange of prisoners, there was no breakthrough.

Ukraine was triumphant after targeting distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was silent, the attack with little state -controlled television coverage. The Russia-1 television channel on Sunday evening spent just over a minute with a brief declaration from the Ministry of Defense read before the images move towards Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian posts.

Zelenskyy said the Kremlin’s setbacks would help force him to the negotiating table, even if she pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield.

“Russia must feel what its losses mean. This is what will push it towards diplomacy,” he said at a summit on Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania, with leaders of the Nordic nations and countries on the eastern side of NATO.

Trend now

• To do a tour or not to tour: the artists guess on the road as the tour becomes more difficult

• Trump’s new steel prices will cause “mass disturbances”, warns Canadian industry

Ukraine has sometimes struck air bases welcoming strategic bombers from Nuclear Russia capable since early in the war, which prompted the Russian Air Force to redeploy most of them in the regions more distant from the first line.

Because Sunday drones were launched from trucks close to the targeted bases in five Russian regions, the military defenses hardly had time to prepare.

Many Russian military bloggers have reprimanded the army for its inability to build protective shields for bombers despite the previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes it a difficult task.

The attacks were “a blow for Russian strategic power” and revealed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capacities, according to Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“It is difficult to underestimate,” wrote O’Brien in an analysis.

Zelenskyy said that “if Istanbul’s meeting does nothing, which clearly means that new strong sanctions are urgent and urgently necessary” against Russia.

International concerns about the consequences of war, as well as trade tensions, lowered the prices of Asian shares on Monday, while oil prices jumped.

Ferocious fights continued along the front line of approximately 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), and the two parties hit the territory with the other with deep strikes.

Russian forces bombed Ukraine southern Kherson, killing three people and injuring 19 others, including two children, regional officials announced on Monday.

In addition, a missile strike and bombing around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, killing five people and injured nine others, officials said.

The Russian air defenses killed 162 Ukrainian drones in eight Russian regions overnight, as well as on the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the Defense Ministry of Defense announced on Monday.

The Ukrainian air defenses damaged 52 of the 80 drones launched by Russia overnight, Ukrainian Air Force said.

–The writers of the associated press Suzan Frazer in Ankara, Turkiye; Hanna Arhirova in kyiv, Ukraine and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.