"Except for humanitarian component, there were no negotiations in Istanbul" – Kyslytsya

He said this in an interview with The Kyiv Independent.

According to Kyslytsya, even though Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in Istanbul, it wasn’t a negotiation, aside from the humanitarian aspect.

"This was a situation where, in the first and second Istanbul meetings, the Russian side presented their ultimatum demands. It wasn’t even a “maximalist” approach in the classical sense where you have a range of options and you aim high to get the maximum," he said.

Kyslytsya noted that the Russian side arrived at the meeting with a mandate to dictate an ultimatum, without having the authority to listen to arguments or seek a compromise. Ukraine, he said, had a three-point mandate: to reach a ceasefire, to set conditions for a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders, and to introduce confidence-building steps, such as a prisoner exchange. But the Russian side, according to Kyslytsya, firmly rejected an unconditional ceasefire before any leaders' meeting at both rounds.

"In this third point, there was at least some conversation — I wouldn’t even call it negotiations, but rather a dialogue. At the first Istanbul meeting, one Russian representative told me: 'I can’t leave the room empty-handed. We must at least agree on prisoner exchanges,’" he said.