Trump wrote on Truth Social: ‘Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???’
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Russia and Ukraine are in the process of exchanging prisoners of war.
Last week, the two sides agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners each, the biggest exchange since the war broke out in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Trump wrote on Truth Social: “A major prisoners swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine. It will go into effect shortly. Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???”
Neither Ukraine nor Russia has officially confirmed the prisoner exchange, which was agreed during a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul on May 16.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presidential aide, Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian negotiating team, said on May 16 that both sides had also agreed to provide detailed proposals for a cease-fire.
After the May 16 talks, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the prisoner exchange would be a “confidence-building measure” ahead of further discussions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that there has been no agreement on where the next round of talks would take place.
Before the Istanbul talks, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there would be no breakthrough on agreeing to a cease-fire unless there was a direct meeting between Trump and Putin.
On May 16, Trump, who was in Abu Dhabi at the time, told reporters that a meeting with Putin would happen “as soon as we can set it up.”
When asked about the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Putin, Peskov told reporters on May 16 that high-level talks were “certainly needed.”
On May 17, Trump said he planned to speak by phone with Putin on the morning of May 19, followed by calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO allies, in an effort to broker a cease-fire.
In a May 17 Truth Social post, Trump wrote in all caps: “The subjects of the call will be, stopping the ‘bloodbath’ that is killing, on average, more than 5000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, and trade.”
Trump called it “a war that should have never happened.”
