(AFP) – US and Ukrainian officials were meeting in Geneva on Thursday to discuss advancing efforts to end Russia’s four-year invasion of Ukraine, just as Moscow signalled it was in no hurry to sign a deal. US leader Donald Trump is pushing for an end to Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, but has so far failed to broker any deal between Moscow and Kyiv. Previous rounds of US-led negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Geneva and Abu Dhabi have failed to yield a compromise, including on the key sticking point of territory.
Russia, which has signalled it will not budge on its demands for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, said Thursday it was too early to make forecasts about when a deal would take place. “Have you heard anything from us about deadlines? We have no deadlines, we have tasks. We are getting them done,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state media. Kyiv says the only way of breaking the deadlock is a leaders’ meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and that it aims to lay the ground for such a summit during talks on Thursday.
“Today in Geneva we continue our work within the framework of the negotiation process. A bilateral meeting with the American delegation has begun — with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said. Ukraine aims to “synchronize positions” with the United States ahead of fresh trilateral talks in March, he added. Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev plans to be in Geneva on Thursday, though there is no indication he plans to meet the Ukrainian side, according to Russian state media. “Dmitriev plans to arrive in Geneva on Thursday to pursue negotiations with the Americans on economic issues,” Russia’s TASS news agency cited an unnamed source as saying.
Hours before the meeting, Russian forces launched some 420 drones and 39 missiles at Ukraine, wounding more than two dozen people in at least six different regions, according to authorities. AFP journalists heard several explosions in central Kyiv shortly after authorities warned Russia had launched its attack. The strikes hit an electricity substation in the southern Odesa region, as well as a school building in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to officials. “Destruction has been recorded in eight regions, with many private homes and apartment buildings damaged,” Zelensky said.
Also ahead of the meeting, Russia announced that it had returned the bodies of 1,000 killed Ukrainian soldiers to Ukraine, while Moscow received 35 Russian bodies in exchange. The two sides regularly exchange the remains of killed servicemen, one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring countries. Zelensky spoke with US President Donald Trump on Wednesday ahead of the talks, with US envoys Witkoff and Kushner part of the 30-minute call. “We expect this meeting (in Geneva) to create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level. President Trump supports this sequence of steps,” Zelensky said.
After first refusing to negotiate with Russia, Zelensky has repeatedly said that the only way of resolving difficult issues, including territory, is through a meeting with Putin. Talks between Moscow and Kyiv remain deadlocked over the fate of the Donbas — the industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been the epicentre of the fighting. Russia is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region and has threatened to take it by force if Kyiv does not cave at the negotiating table. But Ukraine has rejected the demand and signalled it would not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.
– Nico GARCIA with Daria ANDRIIEVSKA in Kyiv
© 2024 AFP
