Downing Street said Vladimir Putin was blatantly stalling progress, less than a fortnight since the Russian president met with US President Donald Trump in Alaska.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with European leaders, met Mr Trump in Washington days after the Alaska meeting to get an update on the talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Russia cannot be more blatant about dragging its feet, and stalling the peace talks,\u201d the Prime Minister\u2019s official spokesman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cUkraine has long been clear it\u2019s willing to enter the\u2026 peace talks.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we continue to see Russia and President Putin prevaricate, these unrealistic asks and delaying tactics to ensure these bilaterals aren\u2019t going ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the meetings in Alaska and the US capital, Russia has said there are no plans for a direct meeting between Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin.<\/p>\n
The country\u2019s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told NBC last week: \u201cThere is no meeting planned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Lavrov had said the two would meet \u2013 but only after key issues have been agreed by officials.<\/p>\n
Russia has continued to launch drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, including hitting an electronics plant last week.<\/p>\n
Nearly 150 miners had to be rescued in Donetsk after shelling on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
No 10 said Mr Putin is using \u201cunrealistic asks and delaying tactics\u201d to \u201censure that these bilateral talks aren\u2019t going ahead\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s spokesman said it was \u201cdisrespectful to President Trump\u2019s peace efforts\u201d.<\/p>\n
He continued: \u201cIt\u2019s another example of Russian disregard for any sort of peace deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Government repeated that the coalition of the willing, including the UK, would be willing to send troops to enforce any peace deal.<\/p>\n
It comes nearly a week after the head of Britain\u2019s armed forces, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, met with Nato counterparts in Washington to discuss military options to secure peace.<\/p>\n
Admiral Radakin travelled to Ukraine on Tuesday to meet Mr Zelensky and introduce his successor as chief of the defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton.<\/p>\n
In a post on social media, the Ukrainian president said the men discussed further support for Kyiv and diplomatic efforts to end the war, including recent talks on security guarantees in the event of a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK will be ready to put troops on the ground following the cessation of hostilities to support multinational Ukraine support for recovery,\u201d the Prime Minister\u2019s official spokesman said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe military planning around all of that is ongoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were talks yesterday, tactical discussions around logistics and movement of military supplies etcetera, we continue to have those discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cWe\u2019re now focused on building a force that\u2019s able to flex to the requirements of any peace deal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downing Street said Vladimir Putin was blatantly stalling progress, less than a fortnight since the Russian president met…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-377072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115099624093139767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}