Ukrainian and American envoys began discussions in Geneva on Thursday February 26 to prepare for new trilateral meetings with Russia, Moscow having stressed for its part that it had “no deadline” for ending the war. “After today’s meetings, preparations for the next trilateral meeting are already further advanced. Most likely, the next meeting will take place in the Emirates, more precisely in Abu Dhabi. We expect this meeting to take place in early March,” commented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his daily evening address.
Ukrainian negotiator Roustem Oumerov confirmed the holding of a bilateral meeting with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. In addition to the economic aspect of the post-war in Ukraine, kyiv and Washington were to “discuss preparations for the next round of negotiations”, he indicated on X, affirming that it is “necessary that we synchronize our positions before this stage”. AFP journalists saw him arrive at a hotel in Geneva, the city already hosting in mid-February a round of talks between Ukrainians and Russians under American mediation, which did not lead to any tangible results apart from a new exchange of prisoners.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for his part, affirmed Thursday that Russia had “no deadline” to end the conflict in Ukraine. “Did you hear us say anything about deadlines?” (…) We have no deadlines, we only have tasks (…). We are in the process of accomplishing them,” he said, quoted by the state news agency TASS.
Trilateral discussions in early March
The meeting in Switzerland was preceded by another night of Russian attacks in Ukraine. Moscow fired some 420 drones and 39 missiles at its neighbor overnight, injuring dozens, including children, and damaging infrastructure and residential buildings in eight regions, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on X. In kyiv, AFP journalists heard explosions in the middle of the night during the Russian attack.
Shortly before these discussions in Switzerland, Russia also announced that it had handed over a thousand remains of Ukrainian soldiers to kyiv, in exchange for the bodies of 35 Russian fighters.
President Zelensky said in early February that Moscow would have offered Washington a resumption of economic cooperation and cooperation agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
American pressure on kyiv
Washington is pushing to end the war, the worst armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War which left hundreds of thousands dead and wounded, millions of Ukrainians taking refuge abroad and massive destruction, particularly in eastern and southern Ukraine.
But according to kyiv and its European supporters, Donald Trump’s administration is demanding more concessions from Ukraine than from Moscow in order to put an end to hostilities. “We cannot exert – I said it – more pressure on us than on the Russians, because they are the aggressors,” declared President Zelensky in an interview with AFP on Friday. The Ukrainian president also wants a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump to resolve the key points of the talks, something the Russian leader has so far refused.
Negotiations are particularly blocked on the fate of Donbass, the large industrial basin in eastern Ukraine: Moscow is demanding that Ukrainian forces abandon the areas they control there, which kyiv refuses. Marking on Tuesday the four years since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky welcomed the fact that Vladimir Putin had “not achieved his goals” of war nor “broken the Ukrainians” despite high-intensity fighting and daily bombing of the country by Moscow.