Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan greets Russian and Ukrainian negotiators before addressing them, ahead of their face-to-face talks in Istanbul, Turkey March 29, 2022. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Press Office/Handout via Reuters
By Anadolu Agency
A fresh round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine brokered by Turkiye kicked off in Istanbul on Tuesday. The two-day peace talks are being held at the presidential Dolmabahce office.
The first session for the day started at 10.30 a.m. local time (0730GMT).
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators arrived in Istanbul on Monday.
Ahead of the talks, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his call for a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine as the war enters its second month.
“We believe that a just peace will have no losers, and a prolonged conflict is not in anyone’s interest,” Erdogan told Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the Turkish metropolis.
Ahead of the delegations’ talks, the heads of the Ukrainian and Russian delegations, David Arakhamia and Vladimir Medinsky, held a face-to-face meeting.
“Delegations are working in parallel on the entire spectrum of contentious issues,” Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s lead negotiator in the peace talks with Russia, wrote on Twitter, sharing a photo from the meeting.
Earlier, Erdogan said he will sit down with both sides for a “short meeting” before the peace talks. He also said that phone talks with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts are continuing in a “favorable direction.”
Several rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine have been held in Belarus so far, and the last talks were in a video conference format on March 14, with no concrete results achieved yet.
Turkiye made headlines worldwide on March 10 for hosting the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers in the southern city of Antalya, the highest-level meeting of the two sides since the war began on Feb. 24.
Although the sides failed to reach an agreement on a cease-fire, they agreed to continue negotiations over the conflict.
Russia’s war on Ukraine has been met with international outrage, with the European Union, US and UK among others implementing tough financial sanctions on Moscow.
At least 1,151 civilians have been killed in Ukraine and 1,824 injured, according to estimates by the UN, which cautioned that the true figure is likely far higher.
More than 3.87 million Ukrainians have also fled to several European countries, with millions more displaced inside the country, according to the UN refugee agency.