Russia and Ukraine will hold US-brokered talks on February 17-18 in Geneva, both countries said Friday, announcing the next leg in fraught negotiations seeking to end the four-year war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump is pushing to end the conflict, unleashed when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but two previous rounds of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi have not yielded any signs of a breakthrough.<\/p>\n
Both sides said publicly the discussions were productive, but Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on the key issue of territory.<\/p>\n
“The next round of talks on the Ukrainian settlement will be held in the same trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine format, on February 17\u201318 in Geneva,” Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.<\/p>\n
Peskov said Moscow’s delegation to Geneva will be headed by Vladimir Medinsky, a hawkish ex-culture minister who led previous failed talks in Turkey, in a switch from the senior military officials who led two previous rounds in Abu Dhabi. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Kyiv confirmed the talks were set for the scenic Swiss city.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The Ukrainian delegation has already begun preparing for this meeting,” said its top negotiator Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s National Security Council.<\/p>\n
He will be joined by Zelensky’s chief of staff and former spy master, Kyrylo Budanov, and a host of other officials.<\/p>\n
Russia’s switch of negotiating teams comes after an assassination attempt on the deputy of its top negotiator in Moscow earlier this month — an attack it said was orchestrated by Kyiv.<\/p>\n
– Territory –<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday arrived in Munich to hold rounds of meetings with European and US officials, seeking support from allies ahead of the talks. He also toured a Ukrainian-German drone production facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Russia has continued to batter Ukrainian cities in recent days, killing six people across the country in overnight strikes that targeted the southern port city of Odesa and energy infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moscow has stuck to its demands in the talks for sweeping territorial and political concessions from Ukraine — rejected by Kyiv as tantamount to capitulation.<\/p>\n
Russia is pushing for Ukraine to pull out of the eastern Donetsk region — around one-fifth of which Kyiv’s forces still control.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has rejected a unilateral pull-back and wants robust Western security guarantees to deter Russia from re-launching its offensive following any ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the four-year conflict, Europe’s deadliest since World War II.<\/p>\n
Russia occupies around one-fifth of Ukrainian land — including the Crimean peninsula it seized in 2014 — and areas that Moscow-backed separatists had taken prior to the 2022 invasion.<\/p>\n
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