Washington
\nUS envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived at the \u200bKremlin on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a new push for a peace deal in Ukraine despite what they have called a lack \u200cof trust between Moscow and Kyiv.
\nThe negotiations are the 10th time Witkoff has met Putin in person during a conflict that has lasted longer than the Soviet Union\u2019s fight against Nazi Germany in World War Two, and follow two days of US-led trilateral peace talks in Abu Dhabi.
\nAfter the Abu Dhabi talks, the first direct US-mediated negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in nine months, the sides said they had agreed on a major \u200bexchange of prisoners of war that is likely to happen in the coming weeks, but announced no breakthrough in wider negotiations.
\nAs he entered a Moscow hotel before the \u200bKremlin talks, Witkoff was asked by a reporter whether progress made in the talks so far meant peace was closer.
\n\u201cI hope so,\u201d he replied.
\nRussian and Ukrainian negotiators reported some progress in Abu Dhabi, but the US side said differences remained on major issues, including territory.
\nWitkoff and Kushner are expected to fly to Dublin later \u200bon Thursday for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who said on Wednesday he hoped a result in the talks could be achieved by the end of this year, but that much depended \u200bon how the United States approached Moscow.
\nresident Donald Trump, who once said he could end the now 4-1\/2-year-old conflict in 24 hours, has instructed Witkoff and Kushner, his son-in-law, to make a new push for peace, which he hopes will burnish his self-styled credentials as a peacemaker.
\nHe said last week that the conflict was close to being settled in a \u201cbig beautiful agreement\u201d, though he has frequently predicted breakthroughs that have not materialised.
\nDisagreement on terrorist
\nKyiv has rejected a demand by Putin, who sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, to surrender the whole of the eastern Donbas region in return for peace\u2013something Russian \u200bforces are trying to achieve on the battlefield in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
\nMoscow has not made major territorial gains this year, but has heavily attacked Ukrainian infrastructure and Kyiv has frequently struck \u200cRussian oil refineries with drones, causing fuel shortages over the summer, a problem which has resurfaced in some regions this week according to local officials.
\nPutin has shown no signs of being ready to moderate his territorial demands, which include a buffer zone in parts of Ukraine which Russia has not formally claimed as its own.
\nVladimir Medinsky, Putin\u2019s lead negotiator in the Abu Dhabi talks, told state TV on Wednesday that \u201cwherever the foot of our Russian soldier has stepped, that is ours.\u201d He was also cited by the TASS state news agency as saying that \u201cevery inch\u201d of what Moscow \u200bregards as Russian land would be returned.
\nThere is \u200btension too over a Ukrainian and European desire\u2013backed by the United States\u2013for the European Union, whose big member states are staunch backers of Kyiv, to have a seat at the negotiating table.
\nThe Kremlin has said that the EU should be included in the talks at some stagebut has poured cold water on the idea \u200bin recent days. It points to a lack of constructive proposals from Brussels and an inability by the EU to select someone \u200bto represent it in any future talks, and says it lacks realism.
\nKaja Kallas, the EU\u2019s foreign policy chief, accused Russia on Monday of pretending to negotiate and said Moscow had shown no goodwill in talks while continuing to bomb Kyiv.
\nWith talks deadlocked on territory, US mediators have tried to steer discussions towards post-war security guarantees and reconstruction, and Russia has spoken of the need to agree on a post-war security framework for Europe.
\nA senior Russian diplomat \u200bsaid on Wednesday that Moscow could conclude non-aggression pacts with NATO member states.
\nBut the idea of discussing such matters \u200bhas stirred fears in Kyiv and among its allies too.
\nEuropean Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that wider European security talks should come only once there is a ceasefire in Ukraine.
\nMoscow has rejected the idea of \u200ba temporary ceasefire, saying it wants an overall deal to end the war rather than a pause in which Ukraine might re-arm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived at the \u200bKremlin on Thursday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a new push for a peace deal in Ukraine despite what they have called a lack \u200cof trust between Moscow and Kyiv. The negotiations are the 10th time Witkoff has met Putin in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105878,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105863\/revisions\/105878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}