The first di­rect peace talks be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine since the ear­ly weeks of Moscow’s 2022 in­va­sion end­ed Fri­day af­ter less than two hours, ac­cord­ing to the Turk­ish For­eign Min­istry and a se­nior Ukrain­ian of­fi­cial.

Kyiv ac­cused the Krem­lin of in­tro­duc­ing new “un­ac­cept­able de­mands” to with­draw Ukrain­ian forces from huge swaths of ter­ri­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial, who spoke to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause he was not au­tho­rized to make of­fi­cial state­ments.

The de­mands had not been pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed, the of­fi­cial said.

He said the Ukrain­ian side re­it­er­at­ed it re­mained fo­cused on achiev­ing re­al progress — an im­me­di­ate cease­fire and a path­way to sub­stan­tive diplo­ma­cy, “just like the U.S., Eu­ro­pean part­ners, and oth­er coun­tries pro­posed,” the of­fi­cial added.

The Turk­ish For­eign Min­istry al­so said in a state­ment that the ses­sion end­ed.

The two sides sat at a U-shaped ta­ble but re­mained far apart in their con­di­tions for end­ing the war. U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who has pressed both Moscow and Kyiv for an end to the con­flict, say­ing a meet­ing be­tween him­self and Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin would hap­pen “as soon as we can set it up.”

“I think it’s time for us to just do it,” Trump told re­porters in Abu Dhabi as he wrapped up a trip to the Mid­dle East.

In Is­tan­bul, a Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion led by De­fense Min­is­ter Rustem Umerov sat op­po­site a low-lev­el Russ­ian team head­ed by pres­i­den­tial aide Vladimir Medin­sky, ac­cord­ing to Ukraine’s For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son Heo­rhii Tykhyi, who pub­lished a pho­to of the meet­ing.

Turk­ish For­eign Min­is­ter Hakan Fi­dan had opened the ses­sion by urg­ing the par­ties “to take ad­van­tage of this op­por­tu­ni­ty,” adding that it was “crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant that the cease­fire hap­pens as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Ma­neu­ver­ing ahead of talks

Both coun­tries en­gaged in diplo­mat­ic ma­neu­ver­ing this week as they tried to show Trump that they are ea­ger to ne­go­ti­ate, al­though he has ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over the slow progress and threat­ened to pun­ish foot-drag­ging.

On Thurs­day, Putin spurned an of­fer by Ukrain­ian leader Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy to meet face-to-face in Turkey. Ze­len­skyy ac­cused Moscow of not mak­ing a se­ri­ous ef­fort to end the war by send­ing a low-lev­el del­e­ga­tion.

Ukraine has ac­cept­ed a U.S. and Eu­ro­pean pro­pos­al for a full, 30-day cease­fire, but Putin has ef­fec­tive­ly re­ject­ed it by im­pos­ing far-reach­ing con­di­tions.

Com­ment­ing on a pos­si­ble Trump-Putin meet­ing, Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov ap­peared to in­di­cate that mo­men­tum for such a sum­mit is build­ing. He told re­porters that top-lev­el talks were “cer­tain­ly need­ed,” but added that prepar­ing a sum­mit would take time.

Fight­ing con­tin­ues

Mean­time, Russ­ian forces are prepar­ing a fresh mil­i­tary of­fen­sive, Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and West­ern mil­i­tary an­a­lysts say.

A Fri­day morn­ing drone at­tack on the north­east­ern Ukrain­ian city of Ku­pi­ansk killed a 55-year-old woman and wound­ed four men, Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Re­gion­al Mil­i­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion, said. All the vic­tims worked for a mu­nic­i­pal util­i­ty.

Rus­sia’s in­va­sion has killed more than 12,000 Ukrain­ian civil­ians, the U.N. says, and razed towns and vil­lages. Tens of thou­sands of Ukrain­ian sol­diers have died, and like­ly a larg­er num­ber of Russ­ian troops, of­fi­cials and an­a­lysts say.

On the bat­tle­field, one Ukrain­ian sol­dier said he wasn’t hope­ful that the talks would bring a swift end to the war.

“I don’t think they will agree on any­thing con­crete, be­cause sum­mer is the best time for war,” he said, us­ing on­ly the call sign “Cor­sair,” in keep­ing with the rules of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. “The en­e­my is try­ing to con­stant­ly es­ca­late the sit­u­a­tion.”

But he told AP that many of his com­rades “be­lieve that by the end of the year there will be peace, al­beit an un­sta­ble one, but peace.”

Be­fore the talks be­gan, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials met with na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­vis­ers from the U.S., France, Ger­many and the Unit­ed King­dom to co­or­di­nate po­si­tions, a se­nior Ukrain­ian of­fi­cial told AP, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to talk about sen­si­tive mat­ters.

The U.S. team was led by re­tired Lt. Gen. Kei­th Kel­logg, Trump’s spe­cial en­voy to Ukraine and Rus­sia, while Umerov and pres­i­den­tial of­fice chief An­driy Yer­mak rep­re­sent­ed Ukraine, the of­fi­cial said.

A three-way meet­ing be­tween Turkey, the U.S. and Ukraine al­so took place, Turk­ish For­eign Min­istry of­fi­cials said. The U.S. side in­clud­ed Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio as well as Kel­logg.

On Thurs­day, Ru­bio said “we don’t have high ex­pec­ta­tions of what will hap­pen” at the Rus­sia-Ukraine talks.

He said he be­lieved a break­through was on­ly pos­si­ble is a meet­ing be­tween Trump and Putin.

Ze­len­skyy, mean­time, was in Tirana, Al­ba­nia, for a meet­ing with lead­ers of 47 Eu­ro­pean coun­tries to dis­cuss se­cu­ri­ty, de­fense and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards against the back­drop of the war.

“If the Russ­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Is­tan­bul to­day can­not even agree to that, to (a) cease­fire, to this clear­ly nec­es­sary first step, then it will be 100% clear that Putin con­tin­ues to un­der­mine diplo­ma­cy,” Ze­len­skyy said. “If that’s not the case, there must be at least some re­sult to­day, start­ing with a cease­fire.”