Agencies Istanbul

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine ended their latest peace talks on Monday in Turkey after just over an hour, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian state media said. Speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, Zelenskyy said both sides "exchanged documents through the Turkish side, and we are preparing a new release of prisoners of the war". The two sides also agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action. Expectations were low for any breakthrough on ending the 3-year-old war after a string of stunning attacks over the weekend.

Kyiv officials said a surprise drone attack Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 7,000 kilometres from Ukraine. The complex and unprecedented raid, which struck simultaneously in three time zones, took over a year and a half to prepare and was "a major slap in the face for Russia's military power," said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service who led its planning.

Zelenskyy called it a "brilliant operation" that would go down in history. The operation destroyed or heavily damaged nearly a third of Moscow's strategic bomber fleet, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones - 472 - at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine's air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defences. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine.

In Lithuania, Zelenskyy said a new release of prisoners of war was being prepared after the Istanbul meeting. The previous direct talks on May 16 also led to a swap of prisoners, with 1,000 on both sides being exchanged. Ukraine also handed Russia an official list of children it says were forcibly deported and must be returned, said Andriy Yermak, head of Zelenskyy's office. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had chaired the peace talks at Istanbul's Ciragan Palace, a residence dating from the Ottoman Empire.