Russian and Ukrainian envoys are set to engage in a new round of United States-brokered talks next week in Geneva as the war approaches the four-year mark with no apparent compromises on territory in sight.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the trilateral talks, which follow two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi, would be held on February 17-18, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
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The new round of negotiations was confirmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn.
As fighting continues along the roughly 1,250-kilometre (750-mile) front line, with Moscow keeping up its assault on Ukraine’s power grid and Kyiv launching long-range attacks on war-related targets like oil refineries, the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland remains a major bone of contention.
Russia is pushing for Ukraine to pull out of the fifth of the eastern Donetsk region in the Donbas that it still controls. Ukraine, for its part, has rejected a unilateral pull-back and wants Western security guarantees to deter Russia from re-launching its offensive if a ceasefire is reached.
Zelenskyy said last week that the US had given the warring parties a June deadline to reach a deal, though US President Donald Trump’s previous ultimatums have not resulted in a breakthrough.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to many estimates, making the war Europe’s deadliest since World War II.
Two previous rounds of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, led by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly focused on military issues, such as a possible buffer zone and ceasefire monitoring.
In the upcoming talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser, Vladimir Medinsky, a hawkish ex-culture minister who previously led failed talks in Turkiye in March 2022, is returning to head Moscow’s delegation.
Ukraine’s delegation will again be led by Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council chief, accompanied by Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and a host of other officials.
In advance of the talks, Russian forces continued to carry out air strikes, killing three brothers between eight and 19 years of age in a strike on eastern Ukraine overnight from Thursday to Friday.
In Odesa, one person was killed and six more injured in a Russian strike at the city’s port and energy infrastructure, officials said.
The local governor of the Volgograd region of southwestern Russia said Friday that three people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured by drone debris from a Ukrainian attack.
On Friday, Zelenskyy attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where he was due to hold bilateral and multilateral meetings to secure support from allies before the talks.
Speaking in Munich, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “ready to talk” with Russian leaders, but that Russia was not yet prepared for “serious” peace talks with Ukraine.
He said discussions with Moscow might make sense as part of a broader effort to bring Russia to the negotiating table, following French efforts to urge European leaders to consider resuming dialogue with Putin.
But the Russians “have to concede that they are really willing to talk about a ceasefire and then about a peace plan,” said the German leader.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that the Russians were “not winning [the war] as some are thinking”.
“This so-called Russian bear is not there,” he told reporters. “It is basically still the speed of a garden snail”, adding that Moscow was accruing “very slow, staggering losses”.
In other developments, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Munich, where the pair “discussed peace efforts and China’s important role in facilitating an end to the war”.
Beijing has said it takes a neutral stance on the Ukraine war, but has been accused by Kyiv and Western allies of providing Russia with crucial support, notably by supplying military components.