US President Donald Trump has said he would speak by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the "bloodbath" in Ukraine, a day after the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in more than three years.
Mr Trump had offered to travel to Turkey for the talks while in the Gulf last week if Mr Putin would also attend, but Mr Putin declined to take him up on the offer.
Earlier Saturday, the Kremlin had said that a meeting between Mr Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be possible only after both sides reach an agreement.
That came a day after direct talks between the two countries led to an agreement for another exchange of prisoners.
The US president has been pressuring Mr Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire in the three-year-old war.
In a post on Truth Social, President Trump said he will speak to Mr Zelensky and NATO officials after his call with Mr Putin.
He expressed hope that a "ceasefire will take place, and this very violent war ... will end".
Russian negotiators at peace talks in Istanbul demanded Ukraine pull its troops out of all the Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia before they would agree to a ceasefire, a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the talks said.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the terms that Russia had put forward at yesterday's meeting in Turkey - the first time the warring sides had held face-to-face talks since March 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion.
The talks lasted only one hour and 40 minutes, and yielded an agreement to trade 1,000 prisoners of war on each side.
The two countries have not specified when that will happen.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, called for stronger sanctions on Russia after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers in northeastern Ukraine just hours after the two countries held their first peace talks in three years of war.
The meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkey yesterday failed to broker a temporary ceasefire.
Commenting on the drone strike in the Sumy region, Mr Zelensky said on X: "All the deceased were civilians. And the Russians could not have failed to understand what kind of vehicle they were targeting. This was a deliberate killing of civilians."
Ukrainian police posted photos of a dark blue passenger van nearly destroyed, with the roof torn off and the windows blown out.
"Pressure must be exerted on Russia to stop the killings. Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy," Mr Zelensky said.
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He said Russia had sent to Istanbul "a weak and unprepared" delegation without a meaningful mandate while real steps were needed to end the war.
"We are expecting strong sanctions against Russia from the United States, from Europe, and from all our partners. Diplomacy must start working," Mr Zelensky stated.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing Russia and Ukraine to hold peace talks, said before the two countries' negotiators met in Istanbul that "nothing could happen" until he had met directly with Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, British foreign minister David Lammy accused Russia of obfuscating after the Istanbul talks, which ended in less than two hours.
"Yet again we are seeing obfuscation on the Russian side and unwillingness to get serious about the enduring peace that is now required in Ukraine," he said.
"Once again Russia is not serious.
"At what point do we say to Putin enough is enough?"
French President Emmanuel Macron also said the talks in Istanbul had been fruitless.
"Today, what do we have? Nothing. And so I tell you, faced with President Putin's cynicism, I am sure that President Trump, mindful of the credibility of the United States, will react," he said during a joint press conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Mr Zelensky had challenged Mr Putin earlier in the week to meet him in person, an offer the Russian leader ignored, but according to the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul this possibility was discussed during yesterday's talks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this morning that Russia considered such a meeting was possible, but only as a result of work between the two sides to "achieve certain results in the form of agreements".
"At the same time, when signing documents that the delegations are to agree upon, the main and fundamental thing for us remains who exactly will sign these documents from the Ukrainian side," Mr Peskov added.
Mr Peskov did not elaborate on that remark. Mr Putin has previously challenged Mr Zelensky's legitimacy as president because his elected term of office expired last year.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones hit an ammunition depot in Russia-occupied Crimea, causing a powerful detonation at warehouses where military equipment, weapons and fuel were stored, a source in Ukraine's security service said.
The source said the depot belonged to the 126th brigade of Russia's Coastal Defence and was located in the village of Perevalne in the southern part of the Black Sea peninsula.
Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
