Listen to this articleListen to this article | 4 minsinfoRussian and Ukrainian envoys are set to engage in a new round of United States-brokered talks next week in Geneva as the war approaches the four-year mark with no apparent compromises on territory in sight.Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that the trilateral talks, which follow two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi, would be held on February 17-18, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listThe new round of negotiations was confirmed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn.As fighting continues along the roughly 1,250-kilometre (750-mile) front line, with Moscow keeping up its assault on Ukraine’s power grid and Kyiv launching long-range attacks on war-related targets like oil refineries, the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland remains a major bone of contention.Russia is pushing for Ukraine to pull out of the fifth of the eastern Donetsk region in the Donbas that it still controls. Ukraine, for its part, has rejected a unilateral pull-back and wants Western security guarantees to deter Russia from re-launching its offensive if a ceasefire is reached.Zelenskyy said last week that the US had given the warring parties a June deadline to reach a deal, though US President Donald Trump’s previous ultimatums have not resulted in a breakthrough.Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to many estimates, making the war Europe’s deadliest since World War II. Advertisement Two previous rounds of trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi, led by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, reportedly focused on military issues, such as a possible buffer zone and ceasefire monitoring.In the upcoming talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser, Vladimir Medinsky, a hawkish ex-culture minister who previously led failed talks in Turkiye in March 2022, is returning to head Moscow’s delegation.Ukraine’s delegation will agai …
