Moscow, Kyiv meet for US-brokered talks after fresh attacks
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators launched fresh US-brokered talks on Tuesday in Geneva seeking to end the four-year war, hours after both sides launched a fresh wave of long-range strikes.
U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to position himself as peacemaker of the conflict unleashed when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but previous rounds of talks mediated by the White House have yielded no breakthroughs.
Moscow's troops have been grinding through eastern and southern Ukraine for months at immense human cost, betting they can outgun and outlast Kyiv's stretched army while vowing to fight on if Ukraine does not cave at the negotiating table.
Kyiv is pushing for robust Western-backed security guarantees to ensure Russia does not re-invade, while AFP analysis found its forces had made limited, but rapid, progress in a key section of the front in recent days.
"Security and humanitarian issues are on the agenda," lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov wrote on social media announcing the meeting had begun.
A source in the Russian delegation confirmed to reporters -- including AFP -- that the talks started.
Umerov further cooled already low expectations, saying that the delegation was approaching the discussions "without excessive expectations."
Even before the talks were underway, Ukraine had accused Russia of undermining peace efforts by launching 29 missiles and 396 drones in a series of attacks that authorities said killed at least four people, wounded others and cut power to tens of thousands in southern Ukraine.
"The extent to which Russia disregards peace efforts: a massive missile and drone strike against Ukraine right before the next round of talks in Geneva," Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga wrote on social media.
Ukrainian energy officials said a Russian drone strike had killed three staff of a power plant in the frontline town of Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine. Another person was killed in the northeastern Sumy region, local officials said.
Sybiga repeated Ukraine's call for allies to exert greater pressure on Russia to negotiate in good faith by applying more sanctions on Moscow.
- Trump warning to Kyiv -
The talks come after two earlier rounds held this year in Abu Dhabi and several attempts last year to break the deadlock.
Russia also said Ukraine had launched a large-scale attack overnight -- claimed to have repelled more than 150 drones mainly over southern regions and Crimean peninsula -- occupied by the Kremlin in 2014.
Officials said an oil depot in southern Russia caught fire.
The Kremlin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists to expect no major news from the first day of talks that are scheduled to roll over into Wednesday.
The war has spiraled into Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II, with hundreds of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their homes in Ukraine and much of the eastern and southern part of the country scarred by war.
Russia occupies around one-fifth of Ukraine -- including the Crimean peninsula it seized in 2014 -- and areas that Moscow-backed separatists had taken prior to the 2022 invasion.
But its war-time economic worries are mounting, with growth stagnating and a ballooning budget deficit as oil revenues -- choked by sanctions -- drop to a five-year low.
- Deadlock -
For the talks in Geneva, the Kremlin reinstated nationalist hawk and former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky as its lead negotiator.
Moscow wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from swathes of heavily fortified and strategic territory as part of any peace deal.
But Kyiv has rejected this deeply unpopular demand, which would be politically and militarily fraught, and has instead demanded security guarantees from the West before agreeing to any proposals with Russia.
"Ukraine better come to the table, fast," Trump told reporters ahead of the negotiations.
Russia has been slowly capturing territory across the sprawling front-line for months.
But Ukrainian forces recently made their fastest gains in two-and-a-half years, recapturing 201 square kilometers (78 square miles) last week, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War.
The counterattacks likely leveraged the disruption of Russian forces' access to Starlink, the ISW said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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