Latest news with #peace negotiations
Russia Today
39 minutes ago
- Politics
- Russia Today
Kremlin reveals expectations for upcoming Ukraine talks
Russia does not expect a breakthrough 'of the miraculous kind' in the upcoming peace negotiations with Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The third round of talks is expected to take place this week in Istanbul, where the two sides met in May and June. During the previous round last month, the two delegations exchanged draft memorandums on peace terms and agreed to humanitarian measures, including the return of prisoners of war and transferring the remains of soldiers. Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Peskov said Russia hopes the next meeting will be held this week, adding that the date will be announced once both sides are ready. According to the spokesman, the upcoming session will include discussions of the memorandums shared earlier, among other topics. Asked about Moscow's expectations for the upcoming talks, Peskov said, 'there is no reason to count on any miraculous breakthroughs,' as the situation is too complex. Peskov pushed back, however, against suggestions that the talks will be fruitless. He pointed to previous progress, such as the humanitarian exchanges, saying they represent tangible results. He reiterated that Russia expects to secure its interests and 'fulfill the tasks that we set from the very beginning.' Asked whether a peace deal could be expected within a year or any other time period, Peskov said, 'Any forecasts would be wrong' due to the number of variables involved.
Russia Today
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Istanbul talks format ‘exhausted itself'
The format of direct peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul has 'practically exhausted itself' due to Russia's 'maximalist' demands, Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislitsa has claimed. Russia and Ukraine have met for two rounds of direct negotiations in Türkiye this year, restarting talks that Kiev unilaterally abandoned in 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal for the ongoing US-backed talks is to demand Kiev's surrender in the conflict, Kislitsa said in an interview with the Kiev Independent published on Friday. 'Putin's mandate is to force capitulation. Their logic is the opposite of ours,' he said, arguing that the Russian position was worse than 'maximalist.' 'Our mandate had three points: first, ceasefire,' Kislitsa said. The second was to 'create the conditions' for a meeting between Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, and the third included 'confidence-building measures' such as humanitarian issues such as prisoner swaps, he added. Putin has not refused such a meeting, but has argued that currently any final peace agreements signed by Zelensky would be illegitimate given that his presidential term expired in May 2024. Kislitsa insisted that a direct meeting between the leaders is necessary due to the 'complexity' and 'depth' of the conflict. He also argued that Moscow aims to 'bureaucratize' the talks. 'We saw this before in the endless Minsk process groups,' the diplomat claimed. 'Endless meetings – but there were no results.' The failed Western-backed 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements were ostensibly meant to freeze the conflict between Ukraine and the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Both former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande later admitted that the accords were a mechanism to stall for time and allow Kiev to rearm. Moscow has refused Ukrainian demands for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, arguing that such a truce would be a repeat of the Minsk Agreements. Russia has maintained that any settlement needs to be permanent, legally foolproof, and it must address the core causes of the conflict. The Kremlin has also condemned French and British initiatives to deploy peacekeeping troops and fighter jets to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, blasting them as 'militaristic.'
Al Arabiya
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Trump interest in Russia sanctions raises Ukraine allies' hopes
A bipartisan US bill that would hit Russia with sanctions in a bid to pressure Moscow into good-faith peace negotiations with Ukraine has gained momentum this week in Congress, but it still lacks the presidential push it needs to get over the finish line. Now, Ukraine's supporters in Washington and Kyiv, who have for months hoped for President Donald Trump to throw his weight behind the bill, are anxiously awaiting what the Republican president has said will be a 'major statement' on Russia on Monday. Trump, who vowed during his election campaign to end Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has given no details on what his planned announcement would entail, but over the past few weeks he has grown increasingly and publicly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his reluctance to accept a ceasefire and the growing civilian death toll of Russian attacks. On Tuesday, Trump approved sending US defensive weapons to Ukraine. Two days later, he came closer than ever to endorsing the sanctions bill, although he has not yet signed off on the legislation's text, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking. Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters earlier in the week that the Senate could vote on the bill this month. Mike Johnson, the top House Republican, has expressed similar optimism, while Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have privately told European diplomats that the bill will move imminently, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. 'The Senate will move soon on a tough sanctions bill – not only against Russia – but also against countries like China and India that buy Russian energy products that finance Putin's war machine,' Graham wrote on X on Tuesday. Still, it was unclear if Trump had given up on pushing for diplomacy with Russia. And the extensive veto power on sanctions that the White House is demanding could render the bill more symbolic than substantive, some supporters acknowledge. Speaking to reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Friday following his second in-person meeting with Russian Foreign Sergei Lavrov, Rubio said 'a new idea' was discussed that he would be taking back to Trump for further consultations. He declined to give further details. 'That new concept is – this new approach is not something that automatically leads to peace, but it could potentially open the door to a path,' Rubio said. But he also reiterated Trump's frustration over Moscow's unwillingness to be more flexible and said Americans had told the Russians weeks ago that a sanctions bill could well pass. Work ongoing The bill, whose lead sponsors are Graham and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, would levy extensive sanctions against various Russian individuals, government bodies and financial institutions. It would also punish other countries that trade with Moscow, imposing 500% tariffs on nations that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly urged Ukraine's Western allies to impose tougher sanctions on Moscow to force the Kremlin to agree to a ceasefire as a step towards reaching an end to the war, now 40 months old. Work on the bill has picked up pace over the last week, according to two US officials. One person familiar with Trump's thinking said the text still needs work. The current version, that person said, does not give the president enough flexibility to carry out his foreign policy agenda independent of Congress. The White House was working with Congress and the bill's sponsors to ensure it would be 'an enhancement to the president's foreign policy objectives,' that person added. One person with knowledge of the drafting process said congressional staff had been ironing out technical issues in recent days, such as how to keep any sanctions from affecting the operations of the US embassy in Moscow. A spokesperson for Graham told Reuters the bill would probably not come to the floor until the week of July 21 at the earliest, due to other legislative priorities. The House of Representatives, which will need to vote on the measure, leaves for August recess in two weeks, meaning floor time is at a premium. That is particularly true if a Trump request to slash $9.4 billion in spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting - which passed the House and is currently in the Senate - heads back to the House following any changes. Some supporters of the bill acknowledge that the legislation is largely symbolic, given that Trump would have broad authority to veto the sanctions, and in any case could simply issue sanctions from the executive branch if he wishes.
Daily Mail
02-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Russia and Ukraine agree on prisoner swap and handover of bodies
Russia and Ukraine have agreed a large-scale transfer of prisoners and fallen soldiers following a second round of peace negotiations hosted by Turkey, but Moscow dismissed a demand from Kyiv to hand over 'stolen' Ukrainian children. Delegates from the warring nations met in Istanbul again today, less than a month after their first round of direct negotiations ended within two hours. Today's talks were over in even shorter order. Only an hour had passed when the negotiators emerged, though not before they managed to agree a major exchange of dead and detained personnel. Under the terms of the agreement, some 6,000 bodies of fighters from each side killed in action will be handed over for burial. At least 1,000 prisoners of war on each side will be exchanged along with all soldiers under the age of 25 and those who suffered serious injuries in combat, Ukraine's lead negotiator and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told reporters in Istanbul. Despite the positive outcome on prisoner transfers, the negotiations appeared to yield no progress toward the full and unconditional ceasefire desired by Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said their Russian counterparts only offered partial two-to-three-day ceasefires at certain points of the frontline to allow for the recovery of those killed in action. Ukraine's state centre for strategic communications, Spravdi, said Russia was only present at the talks to avoid further sanctions from the United States, whose President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with the slow pace of negotiations . Russia's lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky in turn dismissed a Ukrainian request for Moscow to return children forcibly relocated from the occupied regions into Russia. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in March 2023 for Vladimir Putin and Russia's children's ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova on war crimes charges related to the abduction of Ukrainian children. 'Don't put on a show for bleeding-heart European old ladies with no children of their own,' Medinsky is said to have claimed during the talks after he was presented with an official list of 339 children Kyiv claims have been abducted by Russian authorities. There were doubts today's proceedings would return any progress toward a proper ceasefire even before talks got underway in Istanbul. While Ukraine presented their negotiating papers and requests to the Russian side one week in advance of the talks, Moscow's representatives only gave their terms today, leaving Kyiv's negotiators with no time to study them. The meeting in Istanbul also came just one day after Ukraine's SBU security service pulled off a breathtakingly coordinated operation that saw a swarm of kamikaze drones demolish dozens of Russian military planes thousands of miles from Ukrainian soil. The stunning attack - reportedly more than 18 months in the making - represents a glaring intelligence failure on the part of Russia's security apparatus and has been lauded as a great success by Zelensky. That followed one of the largest single-day drone and missile attacks on Ukraine by Russia of the war so far. Yet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the progress made during today's talks was superb and expressed a desire to host a face-to-face summit between Zelensky , Putin and Trump in the near future. 'My greatest wish for both sides is to bring both Vladimir Putin and Zelensky together in Istanbul or Ankara, and even to bring Mr Trump to their side, if they accept,' he said. Many analysts doubt that Putin has any interest in meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart and have predicted that ceasefire talks between Kyiv and Moscow will go round in circles unless Washington steps up to play a more significant role. Zelensky himself said that 'if Russia turns the Istanbul meeting into an empty talk, there must be a new level of pressure, new sanctions, and not just from Europe,' in an apparent reference to US threats to further penalise Russia. 'Without pressure, Putin will just keep playing games with everyone who wants this war to end,' he said. The relentless fighting has frustrated Trump's goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin 'has gone absolutely CRAZY!' but offered no further details. Ukraine's Umerov told reporters in Istanbul that officials in Kyiv would need a week to review the Russian document setting out fresh ceasefire proposals before deciding on a response. The Ukrainian delegation offered to enter a third round of talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, but Russia is yet to respond. In the meantime, Putin and his military officials are likely to be plotting revenge for Ukraine's so-called 'Operation Spiderweb' that Kyiv claims damaged or destroyed up to one-third of the aircraft used to deliver cruise missile strikes on Ukraine. Because Sunday's drones were launched from trucks close to the bases in five Russian regions, military defences had virtually no time to prepare for them. The attack was so devastating that Russian military bloggers termed the operation 'Russia's Pearl Harbor'. The attacks were 'a big blow to Russian strategic air power' and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow's military capabilities, said Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Telegraph
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Trump seems to be finally realising that the Russians think he's an idiot
With the peace negotiations poised to re-start, Russia launched a massive drone and missile strike against Ukraine this weekend. This capped a week that has seen continuous attacks against civilian targets. The Kremlin insists, of course, that Russia is attacking military targets, but even the most cynical Russian supporters would choke on the idea that every hospital and school in Ukraine is full of tanks and missiles. Even President Trump seems to have eventually concluded that Putin is taking him for a fool, after his vitriolic outburst on Sunday against the Russian leader. On Sunday the US president ranted that he 'does not like' what Putin is doing, and called him 'absolutely crazy'. To add fuel to the fire, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested in response that Trump was suffering from 'emotional overload', and Russian newspapers are leading with the story that the US government is sanctioning Europe with high tariffs but not Russia. The Russian papers may be full of anti-Ukraine and European rhetoric, but they are also full of the perilous state of the Russian economy. Everything except tank production is in free-fall downwards – and tank production is still nowhere near enough to match the grievous losses of the war. If Saudi and US threats to drive oil prices below $50 a barrel are realised, the Russian war machine is likely to grind to a halt by this year's end. Worryingly, there is also widespread assertion in the Russian media that 'legally' the Soviet Union still exists, and the Special Military Operation in Ukraine is an internal matter. According to this logic that would also be the case if Russia invaded the Baltic States and Poland – as those countries expect, which is why they are building up their forces as fast as possible. But, finally, President Trump seems to have realised that the Russians think he is an idiot. They are now openly goading him and the penny has finally dropped. The US president has belatedly realised that the 'bad guys' are in Moscow and not in Kyiv and other European capitals. The big mistake Moscow has now made was to neglect Trump's vanity. This is an error that Vladimir Putin may live to regret. Trump, in his anger at the obvious Russian disrespect, may now push the sanctions button and deprive Moscow of the vital oil revenue which allows it to sustain its massive army and creaking economy. Frankly, I hope – and most outside the Kremlin are probably hoping with me – that Donald Trump is now as mad as hell, and will put the boot into Russia where it hurts the most. That's the best chance of ending the war, rather than trying to negotiate with Putin.
