The latest talks in Istanbul were followed by more prisoner exchanges, but yielded no breakthrough in ending the war.

Russian forces are pushing to create “buffer zones” along the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin has said, as fighting rages on in the wake of a third round of peace talks that again failed to yield any progress towards a ceasefire, in a fourth year of war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments during a briefing on Thursday, signalling that Russia had no intention of de-escalating its war on Ukraine following a brief meeting Wednesday between delegations in Istanbul that lasted just 40 minutes.

Negotiators in the Turkish city discussed further prisoner swaps, but remained far apart on a ceasefire and a proposed face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sought by the latter.

At a news conference in Istanbul following the talks, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, said an exchange of prisoners had been carried out on the Ukraine-Belarus border, with about 250 people returned to each side.

More than 1,000 Ukrainians returned

Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying in a post on social media that Wednesday’s prisoner swap – the ninth stage of an exchange process agreed to by the parties in Istanbul – meant that more than 1,000 Ukrainian prisoners had been returned under the agreement.

“For a thousand families, this means the joy of embracing their loved ones again,” Zelenskyy said, adding that many of the prisoners had been in captivity for more than three years.

“It is important that the exchanges are ongoing and our people are coming home,” he said.

“We will continue doing everything possible to ensure that every one of our people returns from captivity.”

Drone and missile attacks

Following the brief meeting in Istanbul, Russia and Ukraine continued their air attacks against each other, with Russian drones and missiles targeting Ukrainian territory overnight and casualties reported in Russia.

Russia launched 103 attack drones and four missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing three people in the Kharkiv region, Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Thursday. More than 10 others were wounded in Cherkasy, including a 9-year-old child, he added.

He noted that, just a day earlier, Ukraine’s delegation in Istanbul had reiterated its “proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire”.

“In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv region, a university gym in Zaporizhzhia,” he said.

“We will make every effort to ensure that diplomacy works,” he added. “But it is Russia that must end this war.”

Yesterday, at the meeting in Istanbul, the proposal for an immediate and full ceasefire was reiterated to the Russian side. In response, Russian drones struck residential buildings and the Pryvoz market in Odesa, apartment blocks in Cherkasy, energy infrastructure in the Kharkiv… pic.twitter.com/Ax9Q0xEM6z

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) July 24, 2025

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In Russia, emergency officials in the Krasnodar region on the Black Sea said debris from a falling drone struck and killed a woman in the Adler district near the resort city of Sochi, while a second woman was seriously injured, the Reuters news agency reported.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, slammed the Conservative and Labour parties after it was revealed this week thousands of Afghan refugees were secretly resettled into the country without the public’s knowledge.

Farage claimed some of those Afghans are sex offenders, sparking a row with the ruling Labour Party, which denied the claims. 

Around 4,500 Afghans have been relocated to the U.K. so far with around 6,900 expected to be relocated overall.

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Meanwhile, waves of migrants continue arriving by boat, further inflaming public frustration over unchecked immigration.

“Amongst the number that have come are convicted sex offenders – I am not, I promise you, making any of this up, and the total cost of this operation has been a staggering £7 billion [$9 billion],” Farage said in a post on X.

“The numbers are off the charts, the cost is beyond comprehension and the threat to women walking the streets of this country, frankly, is incalculable.”

Relocating the 6,900 Afghans is expected to cost £850 million [$1.1 billion]. The £7 billion Farage referenced is likely the total cost of all Afghan resettlement programs since 2021 of about 36,000 Afghans through multiple schemes.

The British government earlier this week revealed it secretly resettled thousands of Afghan nationals in the U.K. after a catastrophic data breach exposed nearly 19,000 applicants who had worked with U.K. forces, an operation kept under wraps by a rare “super injunction” that barred even the mention of its existence. 

The injunction was lifted Tuesday in conjunction with a decision by Britain’s current Labour Party government to make the program public.

The national flag of the United Kingdom is displayed as British troops and service personnel remaining in Afghanistan are joined by International Security Assistance Force personnel and civilians for a Remembrance Sunday service at Kandahar Airfield Nov. 9, 2014, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

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A spreadsheet containing the personal information of the nearly 19,000 people who had applied to relocate to the U.K. after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was accidentally released in 2022 because of a defense official’s email error. The government only became aware of the leak when some of the data was published on Facebook 18 months later.

“I can’t think of a better example of the total incompetence, dishonesty and genuine lack of understanding of what the priorities of a British government are than this Afghan scandal,” Farage added. 

But U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey denied any known sex offenders had been allowed into the U.K. under the program and insisted everyone had been checked “carefully” for any criminal records

He said if Farage had any “hard evidence,” he should report it to the police.

Demonstrators hold placards as Afghans living in London and their supporters attend a protest called by Stand Up To Racism at the Home Office to demand that more refugees from Afghanistan be allowed into the U.K. Aug. 23, 2021, in London. (Guy Smallman; Getty)

“Anyone who has come into this country under any of the government schemes that was under the previous government and now from Afghanistan is checked carefully for security, checked carefully for any of those sort of criminal records that would preclude and prevent them coming to this country,” Healey told Times Radio, according to The Sun. 

British soldiers were sent to Afghanistan as part of an international deployment against al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the war on terror after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. At the peak of the operation, there were almost 10,000 U.K. troops in the country, mostly in Helmand province in the south.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.