By John Revill and Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia began a second day of talks in Geneva on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the United States was putting undue pressure on him to bring an end to the four-year-old war in his country.
The U.S.-mediated peace talks in Switzerland have been taking place as U.S. President Donald Trump has twice in recent days suggested it was up to Ukraine and Zelenskiy to take steps to ensure the talks were successful.
In an interview with U.S. website Axios published on Tuesday, Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that it was “not fair” Trump kept publicly calling on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions in negotiating terms for a peace plan.
Zelenskiy also said any plan requiring Ukraine to give up territory that Russia had not captured in the eastern Donbas region would be rejected by Ukrainians if put to a referendum.
“I hope it is just his tactics and not the decision,” Axios quoted Zelenskiy as saying in the interview.
Trump told reporters on Monday that “Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you.”
TALKS COME DAYS BEFORE FOURTH ANNIVERSARY OF INVASION
The Geneva talks resumed on Wednesday morning.
“The consultations are taking place in groups by areas within the political and military groups. We are working on clarifying the parameters and mechanics of the decisions that were discussed yesterday,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator and head of the National Security and Defence Council Rustem Umerov said on social media.
The talks come just days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of its much smaller neighbour. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions have fled their homes, and many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been devastated by the conflict.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.
RUSSIAN SOURCE CALLED TALKS “VERY TENSE”
Umerov said Tuesday’s talks had focused on “practical issues and the mechanics of possible decisions,” without providing details. Russian officials made no comments on the talks.
However, Russian news agencies quoted a source as saying that the Tuesday talks were “very tense” and lasted six hours in different bilateral and trilateral formats.
Ukrainian government bonds fell as much as 1.9 cents on the dollar in morning trade in Europe on reports of stalled progress at the talks.
Before the talks began, Umerov had played down hopes for a significant step forward in Geneva, saying the Ukrainian delegation was working “without excessive expectations”.
The Geneva meeting follows two rounds of U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that concluded without a major breakthrough as the two sides remained far apart on key issues such as the control of territory in eastern Ukraine.
Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 full-scale invasion. Its recent airstrikes on energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without heating and power during a harsh winter.
Zelenskiy thanked Trump for his peacemaking efforts and told Axios that his conversations with the top U.S. negotiators, envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not involve the same kind of pressure.
Witkoff early on Wednesday said Trump’s efforts to get Russia and Ukraine talking were yielding fruit.
“President Trump’s success in bringing both sides of this war together has brought about meaningful progress, and we are proud to work under his leadership to stop the killing in this terrible conflict,” he said on X. “Both parties agreed to update their respective leaders and continue working towards a deal.”
(Reporting by John Revill, Olivia Le Poidevin, and Ron Popeski; Editing by Michael Perry, Alexandra Hudson)
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