GENEVA: Two days of peace talks in Geneva between Ukraine and Russia ended on Wednesday without a breakthrough, with Presi\u00addent Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Moscow of stalling US-mediated efforts to end the four-year-old war.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has faced repeated pressure from US President Donald Tru\u00admp to agree to a deal that could mean painful concessions, as Russ\u00adian forces pound its power grid and slowly advance on the battlefield.<\/p>\n
As the delegations met for a second day at a hotel in the Swiss city, under the mediation of US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Zelensky had called the first day \u201cdifficult\u201d. \u201cWe can state that Russia is trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage,\u201d he wrote on X.<\/p>\n
No date for talks to resume<\/p>\n
Moments after his statement, the delegations broke off the talks and said they would meet again in the future, without providing a date. Russia\u2019s chief negotiator, former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, described the talks as \u201cdifficult, but business-like\u201d.<\/p>\n
Medinsky \u2014 whom Ukrainian officials have accused of engaging in history lectures rather than substantive talks \u2014 spoke with the Ukrainians for nearly two hours after formal talks ended, according to a representative of Kyiv\u2019s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Zelensky said the formal part of the talks had addressed territory in Ukraine\u2019s east and the fate of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, both sticking points since the beginning of the process.<\/p>\n
Moscow wants Ukraine to cede the roughly 20pc of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian forces have been unable to conquer \u2014 something Kyiv has repeatedly rejected. Kyiv, meanwhile, wants Zaporizhzhia, Europe\u2019s largest nuclear plant, to be operated by the US and Ukraine, which Russia has said is unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Pressure from Trump<\/p>\n
Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion, which has killed hundreds of thousands, driven millions from their homes, and ravaged Ukrainian cities, towns and villages. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.<\/p>\n
Trump has twice suggested in recent days that it is up to Kyiv to make sure a deal is agreed quickly. He had told reporters on Monday: \u201cUkraine better come to the table fast. That\u2019s all I\u2019m telling you.\u201d In an interview with the US news outlet Axios, Zelensky was quoted as saying that it was \u201cnot fair\u201d that Tr\u00adu\u00admp kept publicly demanding con\u00ad\u00adc\u00adessions from Ukraine, not Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA: Two days of peace talks in Geneva between Ukraine and Russia ended on Wednesday without a breakthrough, with Presi\u00addent Volodymyr Zelensky accusing Moscow of stalling US-mediated efforts to end the four-year-old war. Ukraine has faced repeated pressure from US President Donald Tru\u00admp to agree to a deal that could mean painful concessions, as Russ\u00adian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16109,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16110,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16108\/revisions\/16110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}