Faint signs of life appear in effort to halt Ukraine war

Boston Globe

5 days ago

Zelensky proposed talks on a cease-fire, prisoner exchanges, and the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia during the war. He reiterated an offer for a direct meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia, first floated in May. Putin had then remained silent for days before rejecting the offer.
'The Russian side must stop hiding from decisions,' Zelensky said in a video address Saturday evening. Ukraine, he said, has offered a meeting in the coming week in Istanbul, where two previous rounds of talks took place in May and June.
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Zelensky said his national security adviser, Rustem Umerov, had conveyed the proposal to the Russian negotiating team.
Russia did not immediately respond directly to Ukraine's offer. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri S. Peskov, told Russian state television Sunday that Putin wanted a peace agreement but that 'the main thing for us is to achieve our goals' in the war.
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'President Putin has repeatedly spoken of his desire to bring the Ukrainian settlement to a peaceful conclusion as soon as possible,' Peskov said. 'This is a long process, it requires effort, and it is not easy.' Tass, a Russian state news agency, confirmed that the Kremlin had received the offer.
Russia is seeking additional territory, a declaration that Ukraine will not join NATO and will remain a neutral state, limits on the future size of Ukraine's army, and recognition of Russian as an official language in Ukraine, among other demands.
The Trump administration has pushed for an unconditional cease-fire before substantive talks on a final settlement. Ukraine agreed to that condition in March.
In Kyiv, members of Parliament and analysts have held out little hope for a quick resolution in the talks mediated by President Trump, who had said during his election campaign last year that he would end the war, the most lethal in Europe since World War II, within 24 hours of his election. Even as talks began in May, Russia intensified missile and drone bombardments of Ukrainian cities and opened an offensive along the eastern front line.
But by agreeing to talks and another request from the Trump administration to share profits from future natural resources deals, Ukraine succeeded in winning support for the weapons agreement and the threat of sanctions on the Kremlin's trading partners. Under the agreement Trump first announced July 7, allies of Ukraine will donate air defense and other weapons to Ukraine and purchase replacements from the United States. A week later, Trump said he would move to hasten those weapons deliveries, and threatened to impose sanctions on Russia's trading partners to pressure the Kremlin.
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'We in Ukraine did everything we could,' Halyna Yanchenko, an independent lawmaker who caucuses with Zelensky's political party, said in an interview. 'Our goal was to show the US that you cannot believe Putin.'
Some success came in the announcements earlier this month from Trump, though the president has flip-flopped on Ukraine policy before and the sanctions deadline that expires in September will do little to curb Russia's offensive underway in the east.
Ukraine is expecting a first delivery of additional Patriot air defense missiles from Germany, which will then replenish its own arsenal from new purchases from the United States. Seven other NATO countries are expected to follow suit.
Ensuring a longer-term supply of air defenses could hasten talks: It would remove an incentive for Russia to delay talks until Ukraine's air defenses run out, when the Russians could threaten ballistic missile attacks on undefended cities and military sites.