Fresh round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine to take place in Geneva
The talks will take place days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbour.
Another round of US-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine will take place next week in Geneva, days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbour, officials in Moscow and Kyiv said on Friday.
The meeting will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn, confirmed the new round of negotiations.
The talks take place against a backdrop of continued fighting along the roughly 750-mile front line, relentless Russian bombardment of civilian areas of Ukraine and the country’s power grid, and Kyiv’s almost daily long-range drone attacks on war-related assets on Russian soil.
Previous US-led efforts to find consensus on ending the war, most recently two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues, such as the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland that is largely occupied by Russian forces.
Mr Zelensky said last week that the United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal. Previous deadlines given by US President Donald Trump have passed largely without consequence.
Mr Zelensky was in Munich, Germany, on Friday and visited the first joint Ukrainian-German company for the production of drones. Germany has been a major backer of Ukraine in the war.
He was also due to hold bilateral and multilateral meetings at the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of top international security figures.
The grim war of attrition is continuing while the two sides negotiate.
Overnight from Thursday to Friday, a Russian strike killed three brothers between eight and 19 years of age in eastern Ukraine, authorities said.
Their mother and grandmother survived but sustained multiple injuries, the Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office said.
In Odesa, one person was killed and six more injured in a Russian strike at the city’s port and energy infrastructure, officials said.
The Russian defence ministry said on Friday its air defences shot down 58 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions and annexed Crimea during the night.
Of those, 43 were brought down in the Volgograd region of south-western Russia, where three people, including a 12-year-old boy, were injured by drone debris, according to the local governor. Ukraine has recently targeted the Volgograd oil refinery.
