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.