By John Revill<\/p>\n
GENEVA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia concluded the first of two days of U.S.-mediated peace talks in Geneva on Tuesday, with U.S. President Donald Trump pressing Kyiv to act fast to reach a deal to end the four-year conflict.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the negotiations in \u200cSwitzerland, Russia carried out airstrikes overnight across swathes of Ukraine, severely damaging the power network in the southern port city of Odesa. Ukrainian President Volodymyr \u200cZelenskiy said the attacks left tens of thousands without heat and water.<\/p>\n
“We are ready to move quickly toward a worthy agreement to end the war,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address, saying he was waiting for \u200ba report from the negotiating team in Geneva. “The question for the Russians is: Just what do they want?”<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov, the head of the National Security and Defence Council, said in a statement that the day’s talks had focused on “practical issues and the mechanics of possible decisions,” without providing details. He said negotiations would resume on Wednesday for a final day.<\/p>\n
Russian officials made no comments on the talks.<\/p>\n
But Russian news agencies quoted a source as saying that the talks were “very tense” and lasted six hours in different bilateral and \u200ctrilateral formats.<\/p>\n
Both sides agreed to continue the discussions on Wednesday, \u2060the source told the agencies.<\/p>\n
The Geneva meeting follows two rounds of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that concluded without a major breakthrough as the two sides remained far apart on key issues such as the control of territory in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Trump is urging Moscow and \u2060Kyiv to strike an agreement to end Europe’s biggest war since 1945, though Zelenskiy has complained that his country is facing more pressure to make concessions.<\/p>\n
Before the talks began, Umerov played down hopes for a significant step forward in Geneva, saying the Ukrainian delegation was working “without excessive expectations”.<\/p>\n
NEGOTIATING TWO CRISES AT ONCE<\/p>\n
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were representing the Trump administration \u200bat \u200bthe talks. In a rare attempt to negotiate two major global crises simultaneously, they attended the morning’s \u200bindirect negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva before crossing town to \u200cmediate the talks between Ukraine and Russia.<\/p>\n
Trump put the ball in Ukraine’s court when asked by reporters what he was expecting from Tuesday’s talks with Russia.<\/p>\n
“Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n
Russia is demanding that Ukraine cede the remaining 20% of the eastern region of Donetsk that Moscow has failed to capture – something Kyiv refuses to do.<\/p>\n
Delegations from several European countries were present in Geneva, according to four sources familiar with the matter, but did not attend the trilateral peace talks themselves.<\/p>\n
The Europeans were invited after Zelenskiy asked U.S. officials to include them, one of the sources said, adding that they would be briefed \u200cby the Americans and Ukrainians about the discussions. Russia has in the past voiced its opposition \u200bto European involvement.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy on Tuesday called for Kyiv’s allies to increase pressure on Russia to reach a “real \u200band just” peace deal via tougher sanctions and weapons supplies to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Geneva \u200bround comes just days before the fourth anniversary, on February 24, of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its much smaller neighbour. Tens of thousands \u200cof people have been killed, millions have fled their homes, and \u200bmany Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been \u200bdevastated by the conflict.<\/p>\n
“One shouldn’t trust the Russians absolutely, not even a little,” said Oksana Reviakina, 41, an internally displaced person from the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, when asked about the talks while sheltering in a Kyiv metro station during an air-raid alert.<\/p>\n
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea \u200band parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the \u200c2022 invasion. Its recent airstrikes on energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without heating and power during a harsh winter.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John \u200bRevill, additional reporting by Olena Harmash, Max Hunder and Yurii Kovalenko in Kyiv, and Steve Holland aboard Air Force One; Writing by Daniel Flynn \u200band Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Gareth Jones, Ros Russell, Alex Richardson and Cynthia Osterman)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Revill GENEVA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia concluded the first of two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[18,8391,65,4036,136,4072,135,7831,8392,7512],"class_list":{"0":"post-12776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-geneva","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-eastern-ukraine","10":"tag-geneva","11":"tag-peace-talks","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-rustem-umerov","14":"tag-ukraine","15":"tag-ukraine-and-russia","16":"tag-ukrainian-president","17":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}