Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each during peace talks held in Istanbul on Friday, in what would be the biggest prisoner swap of the conflict.
The negotiations, which lasted less than two hours and were mediated by Turkey, marked the first time the nations have engaged in direct peace talks since the war began.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the country’s delegation, told journalists about the agreement reached after the meeting, adding that the two sides also discussed the possibility of a cease-fire and a meeting between their presidents. The head of the Russian delegation, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, also confirmed to Russian state media that the two sides had agreed to a prisoner swap.
Read more: How Putin Missed His Shot at Peace
The lead up to Friday’s talks involved much maneuvering from both nations in an effort to prove to U.S. President Donald Trump that they are willing to engage in direct talks. Trump has pushed for an end to the war.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer to an in-person meeting in Turkey. Zelensky arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, on Thursday. But the Russian delegation came to Turkey without Putin.
In response, Zelensky accused Russia of sending a “sham” delegation of low-level officials and not making a sincere effort to end the war. Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, is a former minister of culture with no background in the military or intelligence services and little sway in Putin’s inner circle.
The U.S. and Europe previously proposed a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine has accepted. But Putin has refused to accept the ceasefire proposal unless a long list of his demands are met.
While Trump supported the peace talks earlier this week, he said on Thursday that nothing significant would happen until he met with Putin. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously reiterated Trump’s comments, made an appearance in Istanbul on Friday. American officials spoke with the Ukrainian and Russian delegations separately, and Rubio did not attend the direct peace talks.
For Zelensky, prisoner swaps like the one agreed in Istanbul have at times served as a means of building trust with the Russians and gauging their intentions. When he took office in 2019, Ukraine had already been at war with Russia for five years over control of its eastern regions, and Zelensky worked hard to find a settlement with Putin that might forestall a wider war.
During their first phone call in the spring of that year, the two presidents agreed to a prisoner exchange. “As you can see, we don’t just talk, we have results,” Zelensky said after going to meet the returning captives at the Kyiv airport. The swaps did not cease even after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Indeed, the only diplomatic channel to remain consistently open between the warring sides has been the one devoted to prisoner exchanges.
“The president has set a goal of returning everyone as soon as possible,” said his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who oversaw the negotiations.
They could be agonizing, he told TIME, as the negotiators argued over lists of names and the relative value of the captives. Final approval on the Russian side often went all the way up to Putin, who could decide to scrap an exchange after months of negotiations. “These swaps were always on the edge,” Yermak said. “Always hanging by a thread.”
Even so, Putin has demonstrated a willingness to send even his most prized captives home to Ukraine. In the spring of 2022, Russian forces trapped a large group of Ukrainians inside a gigantic steel factory called Azovstal, in southern Ukraine. The defenders of the plant held out for over a month under siege, despite running out of food, potable water, ammunition and other supplies. After their eventual surrender that May, the Russians said they had taken well over 2000 Ukrainians hostage at Azovstal.
Many of them were systematically beaten and tortured in Russian prison camps, according to human rights groups and medical experts who met the captives after their release. In July 2022, more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war were killed in an explosion at the notorious camp at Olenivka, adding a desperate sense of urgency to the Ukrainian efforts to bring the rest of them home. Russian officials promised to stage a trial of the commanders captured at Azovstal, and President Zelensky worried that they would be executed.
But, through military and diplomatic back channels, the two sides continued negotiating their release. In September 2022, the Kremlin agreed to free all of the top commanders from Azovstal in what became the biggest swap of the war up to that point. It involved 215 prisoners held by Russia in exchange for 55 captives held in Ukraine.
The terms of the latest swap, as agreed during the talks this week in Istanbul, would make it the largest of the war so far. But there is no guarantee it will advance the broader peace process. Past exchanges have taken place during some of the most gruesome periods of fighting, when both sides treated them as a practical necessity rather than a gesture of goodwill on the road to peace. The exchange that freed the commanders of Azovstal, for example, took place during a massive Ukrainian counteroffensive, which forced the Russians to retreat from the northeastern region of Kharkiv in Sept. 2022. Shortly after that prisoner swap, Putin announced plans to mobilize some 300,000 troops, clearly showing his intention to continue the war.
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