Ukraine and Russia are working on a fresh exchange of prisoners of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after peace talks concluded between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul.
The air was heavy with tension — not just from the weight of stalled peace negotiations, but from the thunder of exploding drones and fury back home.
What was supposed to be a cautious second round of direct talks was overshadowed by an Ukrainian drone attack that hit Russia where it hurts — its strategic bombers.
Expectations for peace were low. The last round of talks on May 16 led to the largest prisoner exchange of the war — 1,000 soldiers from each side — but failed to move the needle on ceasefire or diplomacy. Delegations returned to the table with the same rigid postures.
Ukraine was represented by defence minister Rustem Umerov. Russia’s team was led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin.
Earlier, Ukrainian forces struck four Russian airbases across three time zones, targeting military assets thousands of kms from the battlefield and reportedly destroyed 40 warplanes.
Zelensky hailed the move as “a brilliant operation".
“It’s genuinely satisfying when something I authorised a year and six months ago comes to fruition and deprives Russians of over forty units of strategic aviation,” Zelensky said. He added, “Russia suffered significant losses — entirely justified and deserved. The preparation took over a year and a half. Planning, organisation, every detail was perfectly executed. It can be said with confidence that this was an absolutely unique operation.”
The international response was sharp but cautious. Germany said it had not been informed of the drone operation in advance. “The German government was not informed about this, but that is not necessary because the Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves against a war that violates international law,” a spokesperson in Berlin said.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: “I think they (Ukraine) have the right to defend themselves and sometimes it includes pushing back so it seems that it has been successful.”
Speaking from Lithuania during a meeting with Nordic, Baltic, and Eastern European leaders, she said: “Russia is a threat to all of us and therefore we need to strengthen our Eastern flank. We have to push for a ceasefire still but at the same time we have to do what is needed at the battlefield in Ukraine so they can actually win this war.”
In Washington, US President Donald Trump was reportedly not given any heads-up about the drone attacks. Trump, long criticised for his stance on Putin, posted online recently that the Russian president was “absolutely CRAZY” and “needlessly killing a lot of people” in Ukraine.
The attack, codenamed “Operation Spider’s Web,” was the most expansive in scope since the war began in 2022.
Drones struck simultaneously in Russia’s Arctic, Siberia, and Far East — more than 7,000 kms from Ukraine’s borders. Maliuk, who led the planning, said the logistics took more than 18 months.
Russia, in response, launched 472 drones at Ukraine — the highest number since the invasion began. The barrage, mostly aimed at civilian areas, was widely seen as an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems.