KYIV: Ukraine will only hold direct talks with Russia once a ceasefire is in place, its President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday, as his US counterpart Donald Trump pushed for a speedy deal to end the three-year Ukraine conflict.
\n\u201cAfter the ceasefire, we are ready to sit down in any format,\u201d Zelensky told journalists at a briefing a day before key talks in London on a potential Ukraine settlement.
\nTrump, who promised on the campaign trail to strike a deal between Moscow and Kyiv in 24 hours, has failed since his return to office three months ago to wrangle concessions from Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt his troops\u2019 offensive in Ukraine.
\nTrump said over the weekend that he hoped a peace deal could be struck \u201cthis week\u201d despite no signs the two sides were anywhere close to agreeing even a ceasefire, let alone a wider long-term settlement.
\nKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned Tuesday against rushing into a speedy ceasefire, telling a state TV reporter that the issue was too \u201ccomplex\u201d for a quick fix.
\n\u201cIt is not worth setting any rigid time frames and trying to get a settlement, a viable settlement, in a short time frame,\u201d he said.
\nKremlin aide Yuri Ushakov meanwhile told state media that US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff was expected this week in Moscow, his fourth visit to Russia since Trump took office.
\nMoscow\u2019s forces occupy around a fifth of Ukrainian territory and tens of thousands of people have been killed since the war started in February 2022.
\nAfter rejecting a US-Ukrainian offer for a full and unconditional ceasefire last month, Putin announced a surprise Easter truce over the weekend.
\nFighting dipped during the 30-hour period but Russia launched fresh attacks on residential areas on Monday and Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said.
\nKyiv and its allies dismissed the truce as a public relations exercise from Putin.
\n\u201cThe Easter truce that he announced somewhat unexpectedly was a marketing operation, a charm operation aimed at preventing President Trump from becoming impatient and angry,\u201d French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told FranceInfo radio.
\nUkraine\u2019s allies will meet in London on Wednesday, a senior Kyiv official told AFP.
\nThey are expected to discuss the contours of a possible deal they could all get behind.
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not attend the London talks due to scheduling issues, a State Department spokeswoman said, adding that US envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg would take part.
\nEuropean leaders are scrambling to work out how to support Ukraine should Trump pull Washington\u2019s vital military and financial backing.
\nZelensky said his team\u2019s \u201cfirst priority\u201d at the London talks would be \u201can unconditional ceasefire.\u201d
\nHe proposed to Russia on Sunday a halt of missile and drones strikes against civilian facilities for at least 30 days.
\nWhile saying he would \u201canalyze\u201d the idea, Putin threw doubt on it 24 hours later by accusing Kyiv of using civilian facilities for military purposes.
\nHe held open the prospect of bilateral talks on the topic, though the Kremlin said there were no fixed plans to engage with Kyiv.
\n\u201cThere are no concrete plans (to talk), there is readiness from Putin to discuss this question,\u201d Peskov said Tuesday.
\n\u201cIf we are talking about civilian infrastructure, then we need to understand, when is it civilian infrastructure and when is it a military target,\u201d he added.
\nRussia hit a residential area in the eastern Ukrainian city of Myrnograd with drones Tuesday, killing three people and wounding two, local authorities said.
\nOne person was reported dead and 23 wounded after two guided aerial bombs pounded the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, the region\u2019s governor said.
\nPhotos from Ukraine\u2019s emergency services showed the outer walls of an apartment block blown open and a bloodied man tended to by medics on a stretcher, with bandages around his head and arms.
\n\u201cOne guided aerial bomb hit an infrastructure facility, another one hit a densely populated neighborhood, a residential building directly,\u201d Zaporizhzhia Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
\nRussian strikes wounded another six in the southern city of Kherson and seven in Kharkiv in the northeast, officials said.
\nThe Russian army meanwhile claimed to have captured a village in the eastern Donetsk region, where its troops are advancing.
\nRussia has pressed on with a grinding advance in recent months in southern and eastern Ukraine and recaptured much of Russia\u2019s Kursk region, parts of which Kyiv seized last year and was hoping to use as a bargaining chip.
\nThere were no ongoing discussions on any new US aid packages with the Trump administration, Zelensky said.
\nIn Paris last week, Rubio presented Washington\u2019s plan for ending the conflict, though both he and Trump warned that Washington\u2019s patience was wearing thin and could lead it to withdraw.
\nMany in Ukraine fear any US-brokered settlement would benefit Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Ukraine will only hold direct talks with Russia once a ceasefire is in place, its President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday, as his US counterpart Donald Trump pushed for a speedy deal to end the three-year Ukraine conflict. \u201cAfter the ceasefire, we are ready to sit down in any format,\u201d Zelensky told journalists at a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":78062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80017","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\/80017","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=80017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80034,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80017\/revisions\/80034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}