Russia and Ukraine to Hold First Direct Peace Talks in over 3 Years

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024.  (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
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Russia and Ukraine to Hold First Direct Peace Talks in over 3 Years

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024.  (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)
(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on May 12, 2025 shows a pool photograph distributed by Russia's state agency Sputnik bearing Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) during the Victory Day military parade in central Moscow on May 9, 2024 and a picture of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky during a press conference with French President at the Elysee palace in Paris on February 16, 2024. (Photo by Mikhail KLIMENTYEV and Thibault CAMUS / POOL / AFP)

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will meet in Istanbul on Friday for their first peace talks in more than three years as both sides come under pressure from US President Donald Trump to end Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two.

The encounter at the Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus is a sign of diplomatic progress between the warring sides, who had not met face-to-face since March 2022.

But expectations for a major breakthrough, already low, were dented further on Thursday when Trump said there would be no movement without a meeting between himself and Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

Turkish Foreign Ministry sources said a meeting between Turkish, US and Ukrainian officials would take place at 0745 GMT, followed by talks between Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian delegations at 0930 GMT.

Putin on Sunday proposed direct talks with Ukraine in Türkiye, but has spurned a challenge from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet him in person, and instead has sent a team of mid-ranking officials to the talks.

Zelenskiy said Putin's decision not to attend but to send what he called a "decorative" lineup showed the Russian leader was not serious about ending the war. Russia accused Ukraine of trying "to put on a show" around the talks, Reuters reported.

Russia says it sees them as a continuation of the negotiations that took place in the early weeks of the war in 2022, also in Istanbul.

But the terms under discussion then, when Ukraine was still reeling from Russia's initial invasion, would be deeply disadvantageous to Kyiv. They included a demand by Moscow for large cuts to the size of Ukraine's military.

With Russian forces now in control of close to a fifth of Ukraine, Putin has held fast to his longstanding demands for Kyiv to cede territory, abandon its NATO membership ambitions and become a neutral country.

Ukraine rejects these terms as tantamount to capitulation, and is seeking guarantees of its future security from world powers, especially the United States.

The US State Department's director of policy planning Michael Anton will represent the US in the talks, said a state department spokesperson.

The Russian delegation is headed by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky and includes a deputy defense minister, a deputy foreign minister and the head of military intelligence.

Zelenskiy said on Thursday his team would be led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and include the deputy heads of Ukraine's its intelligence services, the deputy chief of the military's general staff and the deputy foreign minister.



IAEA Chief Says No Further Damage at Iranian Enrichment Facilities 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives for an exceptional meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors to discuss Israel’s strike on Iran that have hit nuclear targets including the Natanz nuclear complex, at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives for an exceptional meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors to discuss Israel’s strike on Iran that have hit nuclear targets including the Natanz nuclear complex, at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (Reuters)
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IAEA Chief Says No Further Damage at Iranian Enrichment Facilities 

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives for an exceptional meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors to discuss Israel’s strike on Iran that have hit nuclear targets including the Natanz nuclear complex, at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (Reuters)
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives for an exceptional meeting of the agency’s Board of Governors to discuss Israel’s strike on Iran that have hit nuclear targets including the Natanz nuclear complex, at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 16, 2025. (Reuters)

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi provided an update on Monday on the situation at Iran's nuclear facilities after Israel launched military strikes and said there was no sign of further damage at the Natanz or Fordow enrichment sites.

Grossi and the International Atomic Energy Agency he heads had previously reported that the smallest of Iran's three enrichment plants, an above-ground pilot plant at the sprawling Natanz nuclear complex, had been destroyed.

While there was no sign of a physical attack on the bigger underground enrichment plant at Natanz, its power supply was destroyed, which may have damaged the uranium-enriching centrifuges there. No damage was seen at the Fordow plant dug into a mountain.

"There has been no additional damage at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant site since the Friday attack, which destroyed the above-ground part of the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant," Grossi said in a statement to an exceptional meeting of his agency's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Having said over the weekend that Israeli strikes damaged four buildings at the Isfahan nuclear facilities including the uranium conversion facility that processes "yellowcake" uranium into uranium hexafluoride, the feedstock for centrifuges, so it can be enriched, he elaborated on the damage there.

"At the Esfahan nuclear site, four buildings were damaged in Friday's attack: the central chemical laboratory, a uranium conversion plant, the Tehran reactor fuel manufacturing plant, and the UF4 (uranium tetrafluoride) to EU metal processing facility, which was under construction," he said.

"The (International Atomic Energy) Agency is and will remain present in Iran. Safeguards inspections in Iran will continue as soon as safety conditions allow, as is required under Iran's NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) safeguards obligations," he added.