Russia and Ukraine trade drone attacks after latest ceasefire talks

Drone strikes by both Moscow and Kyiv killed two in Russia and three in Ukraine, hours after a brief third round of ceasefire talks concluded in Istanbul.

Three people were found dead in the rubble of a house after a strike in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region and several people were wounded in the cities of Cherkasy and Zaporizhzhia.

In the Black Sea port city of Odesa the famous Pryvoz market, as well as a central boulevard which is a Unesco world heritage site, were also hit.

Several fires broke out across the city following an overnight attack, authorities said.

Meanwhile, Russian authorities said two people were killed and 11 injured in an overnight Ukrainian drone strike on Sochi, in Russia’s Krasnodar region.

Another Russian attack on the Ukrainian city Kharkiv on Thursday morning also left 33 injured.

Ukrainian and Russian delegations met on Wednesday evening in Istanbul in the third round of ceasefire talks.

Neither side appeared to harbour much hope for progress before start of the talks, which according to the head of the Ukrainian delegation lasted barely an hour.

The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said both countries agreed to swap 1,200 prisoners of war and that Russia had offered to transfer 3,000 bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers back to Kyiv.

But no tangible steps were taken to end the conflict, now well into its fourth year, and both sides accused the other of rejecting their ideas.

“We did not expect a breakthrough. A breakthrough is hardly possible,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday.

Ahead of the meeting the head of the Ukrainian delegation, Rustem Umerov, said the “priority” for Kyiv was to organise a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the end of August.

But Peskov poured cold water on the idea, saying it was “premature” for the two presidents to meet.

“They [Ukraine] are trying to put the cart slightly ahead of the horse,” he said, adding much more work had to be done before any such meeting could take place.

Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Hocharenko said on Facebook that a separate meeting between Umerov and Medinsky had taken place behind closed doors on the sidelines of the main talks.

Hocharenko said Umerov and Medinsky have a “good relationship”.

The first two rounds of ceasefire talks were held in May and June at the request of US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants to see the end of the “horrible, bloody war” that was sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Earlier this month Trump set a deadline of 50 days for Russia and Ukraine to end the war, threatening “severe tariffs” on Moscow if a deal is not reached.

Russia has long refused to budge on its preconditions for peace – namely the removal of the “root causes” of the war, which include Ukraine becoming a neutral state, dramatically reducing its military and abandoning its Nato aspirations.

None of these are acceptable to Kyiv, or to its Western allies.

“We will do everything to make diplomacy work,” Zelensky said on social media on Thursday after the talks. “But it is Russia that must end this war that it started itself.”