What happened
Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Istanbul on 16 May 2025, the first direct talks since the spring of 2022, after President Putin proposed them in place of the ceasefire Ukraine and its partners had demanded. Two further rounds followed on 2 June and 23 July. Each produced large prisoner and body exchanges and an exchange of written positions; neither side's memorandum was accepted, Russia's restating its territorial and neutrality requirements and Ukraine's a ceasefire before any settlement. No ceasefire, mechanism or text followed.
The format that showed what direct contact could and could not do: the humanitarian track worked, the political track did not move, and the pattern — exchanges without architecture — is the one the negotiation question has read since. Istanbul is also the precedent the 2026 trilateral format was built against.
Confidence: High
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