Ukraine urges quick moves in peace talks

KYIV: Kyiv's foreign minister has said the Ukrainian and Russian leaders need to meet in person to hash out the hardest remaining issues in peace talks, and that only US President Donald Trump has the power to bring about an agreement. Ukraine wants to accelerate the efforts to end the four-year old war and capitalise on momentum in the US-brokered talks before other factors come into play, such as campaigning for the US. Congressional mid-term elections in November, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in an interview.
'Only Trump can stop the war,' Sybiha told Reuters in his office in Kyiv, close to the Dnipro river. From a 20-point peace plan that has formed the basis of recent trilateral negotiations, only 'a few' items remain outstanding, ​Sybiha said. 'The most sensitive and most difficult, to be dealt with at the leaders' level.' On key issues, such as land, the two sides appear far apart. Russia has maintained its demand that Ukraine cede the remaining 20 per cent of the eastern region of Donetsk that it has failed to occupy during years of grinding, attritional warfare — something that Kyiv has steadfastly refused.
Ukraine also wants control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the largest in Europe — which is in Russian-occupied territory. During a second round of trilateral peace talks in Abu Dhabi this week there was no sign of a breakthrough, ‌though an exchange of 314 prisoners of war was concluded on Thursday — the first such swap since October. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Saturday that the US had proposed a new round of talks in Miami in a week, which Kyiv had agreed to. 'My assessment is we have momentum, that's true,' Sybiha said. 'We need consolidation or mobilisation of these peace efforts, and we're ready to speed up.'
Nearly four years after its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia occupies almost a fifth of Ukraine's territory - including the Crimean Peninsula and parts of eastern ⁠Ukraine occupied before the war - and has devastated the electricity and heating network with targeted bombing. On the battlefield, analysts say Russia has gained only about 1.3 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2023. Zelensky said on Saturday that Washington hoped the war could be ended before the summer and Ukraine had suggested a sequencing plan, but he provided no details. Sources had told Reuters on Friday that Ukrainian and US officials had discussed a timetable including a draft deal with Russia by March and a referendum on it in Ukraine alongside elections in May.
Ukraine is focused ⁠on obtaining Western security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression once a ceasefire enters force. The US, Sybiha said, had confirmed to Ukraine that it was prepared to ratify security guarantees ⁠in Congress; it would then provide a security 'backstop' to support the peace deal, though no US troops on the ground in Ukraine.
A statement issued after a meeting in Paris last month of the 'coalition of the willing' said the allies would participate in a proposed US-led ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism. Officials have said this would likely involve drones, sensors and satellites, not US troops. The foreign minister said some other countries beyond Britain and France, both already publicly committed, had confirmed their readiness to send troops to Ukraine as a deterrence force, but he declined to identify them. — Reuters