By John Revill
GENEVA, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia met for 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.
Trump is urging Moscow and Kyiv to reach a deal to end Europe’s biggest war since 1945, though Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that his country is facing the greatest pressure to make concessions.
Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said ahead of the talks that the two sides would discuss “security and humanitarian issues”. The Geneva meeting follows two rounds of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that concluded without a major breakthrough.
“We are working constructively, focused and without excessive expectations,” Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, posted on X. “Our task is to maximally advance those solutions that can bring sustainable peace closer.”
The political portion of talks had ended by early Tuesday evening but military representatives were still locked in discussions at a hotel in the lakeside Swiss city, according to a source familiar with the matter.
HEAVY AIRSTRIKES ON UKRAINE OVERNIGHT
Ahead of the talks, Russia carried out heavy airstrikes overnight across swathes of Ukraine, inflicting severe damage to the power network in the southern port city of Odesa, which Zelenskiy said left tens of thousands without heat and water.
Zelenskiy called for Kyiv’s allies to increase pressure on Russia to reach a “real and just” peace deal via tougher sanctions and weapons supplies to Ukraine.
The Ukraine negotiations followed a morning of talks between U.S. and Iranian officials at a different venue in Geneva.
Trump put the ball in Ukraine’s court when asked by reporters what he was expecting from Tuesday’s talks with Russia.
“Well, we have big talks,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you.”
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.
“This time, the idea is to discuss a broader range of issues, including, in fact, the main ones. The main issues concern both the territories and everything else related to the demands we have put forward,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday.
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.
The Europeans were invited after Zelenskiy asked U.S. officials to include them in the process, one of the sources said, adding that they would be briefed by the Americans and Ukrainians about the discussions. Russia has in the past voiced its opposition to European involvement in the process.
NEGOTIATING TWO CRISES AT ONCE
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were representing the Trump administration at the talks.
In a rare attempt to negotiate two major global crises simultaneously, they attended the morning’s indirect negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva before crossing town to mediate the talks between Ukraine and Russia.
The Geneva round comes just days before the fourth anniversary, on February 24, of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its much smaller neighbour. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions have fled their homes, and many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been devastated by the conflict.
“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.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. Its recent airstrikes on energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without heating and power during the course of a harsh winter.
EXPECTATIONS LOW FOR SIGNIFICANT BREAKTHROUGH
The Kremlin said the Russian delegation was being led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin.
However, the fact that Ukrainian negotiators have accused Medinsky in the past of lecturing them about history as an excuse for Russia’s invasion has further lowered expectations for any significant breakthrough in Geneva.
Military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov was also expected to take part in the Geneva talks, while Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev was due to join a separate working group on economic issues.
Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Zelenskiy said he hoped the Geneva talks would prove “serious, substantive… but honestly sometimes it feels like the sides are talking about completely different things”.
(Writing by Dan Flynn; Reporting by John Revill, additional reporting by Olena Harmash, Max Hunder and Yurii Kovalenko in Kyiv, and Steve Holland aboard Air Force One; Editing by Gareth Jones, Ros Russell and Alex Richardson)
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