Russia offers three-day ceasefire in Ukraine war to ‘collect the dead’

Ukraine's First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya (left,) Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, deputy head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence Vadym Skibitskyi, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President Oleksandr Bevz and Foreign Ministry spokesman George Tykhyi give statements to the press at the Ciragan Palace after the second round of Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, Turkey on June 2. Photo / Getty Images

Russia offered a limited ceasefire to collect the bodies of fallen soldiers from the battlefield on Monday as a second round of peace talks ended without a clear breakthrough on a wider truce.

Vladimir Putin’s chief negotiator suggested localised pauses in fighting could be used by both sides to retrieve thousands of corpses from across the front lines.

It came after an agreement for an exchange between the two warring countries of 6000 bodies each.

After the Istanbul talks broke up, Vladimir Medinsky, who headed the Russian delegation, said: “We have proposed a specific ceasefire for two to three days in certain areas of the front line, so that commanders can collect the bodies of their soldiers.”

It was not clear whether the Ukrainian delegation, led by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, accepted their enemy’s proposal.

But Umerov told reporters after the talks that the two sides had also agreed to an “all-for-all” exchange of all seriously wounded and injured prisoners of war and captured servicemen aged under 25 years old.

A Ukrainian official familiar with the talks described them as “unproductive”, as Moscow refused to remove a series of unacceptable preconditions for a longer-term ceasefire.

This included a demand that Kyiv withdraw its forces from the four regions in eastern Ukraine that are only partially occupied by Russian troops.

The Turkey and US-brokered talks, which lasted around an hour, were just the second direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials in the past three years.

Kyiv has been pushing for an unconditional, 30-day ceasefire, as backed by Donald Trump, in the two rounds of negotiations.

But Putin has continued to stall on any large-scale truce that would pause the fighting on land, air and sea.

The Russians have previously used mini-ceasefires to prepare for assaults or repair bridges crucial for resupplying the frontlines, a senior member of Ukraine’s military told the Telegraph.

The two sides faced off across a U-shaped table, with Turkish officials at the head, inside a large conference at the Ciragan Palace in Istanbul.

“It didn’t end negatively,” Oncu Keceli, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman, said yesterday after the talks drew to a close.

As they entered the room earlier, the Russian negotiators appeared stony-faced, a day after Ukraine had launched an audacious drone attack on Moscow’s strategic bomber force.

The two sides did not shake hands or exchange pleasantries.

Putin’s officials showed little sign they were willing to engage with a Ukrainian memorandum published before the talks, which proposed a full ceasefire, security guarantees for Kyiv and confidence-building measures before a possible peace accord.

The Russian intransigence has frustrated Trump, but the US President has yet to pull the trigger on a threatened sanctions package against Moscow that is being backed by Ukraine and its European allies.

Moscow reportedly shared its own two-point plan – a list of preconditions before a ceasefire – with Ukraine at the talks after weeks of refusing to publish it.