US and Russian officials held talks at the Russian consulate in Istanbul on Thursday that focused on normalizing diplomatic relations.
The meeting marked the second round of normalization talks since the first was held in Istanbul on February 27. According to Russia’s TASS news agency, the talks lasted about five and a half hours.
The Russian delegation was headed by Alexander Darchiev, the Russian ambassador to the US, who said after the meeting that good progress was made toward normalizing the work of the two countries’ diplomatic facilities.
Sonata Coulter, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia and Central Europe, led the US delegation. The State Department described the talks as “constructive” and said the two sides “exchanged notes to finalize an understanding to ensure the stability of diplomatic banking for Russian and US bilateral missions.”
Also on Thursday, the US and Russia conducted a prisoner swap that involved Moscow freeing Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American citizen who was serving a 12-year sentence for allegations that she was raising money to arm Ukraine, which appeared to be based on a donation she made to a US-based Ukraine aid group.
In exchange for Karelina, the US released Arthur Petrov, a dual German-Russian citizen who was arrested in Cyprus in 2023 at the behest of the US over allegations that he was exporting microelectronics to companies manufacturing weapons for Russia.
While the US and Russia appear to be making progress on diplomatic relations, a ceasefire in Ukraine remains elusive as fighting continues to rage despite US-mediated talks.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said on Thursday that there would be no serious changes to US-Russia relations without a Ukraine ceasefire. “I think that President Trump has been very clear that there is one thing on the table with Russia, which is the ceasefire, [and] that there is no other dynamic that is going to be addressed or facilitated until that is dealt with,” she said.
