JAKARTA - A delegation from the United States and Ukraine completed talks to discuss further efforts to end the four-year-old war with Russia on Thursday, while Moscow signaled that it was in no rush to sign an agreement.
An AFP reporter saw the US delegation leave the Hotel des Bergues in Geneva, where the talks took place, and the Swiss news agency ATS-Keystone published a photo of Ukraine's chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, leaving the hotel.
Kyiv says the only way to break the deadlock is a leaders' meeting between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, and that they aim to lay the groundwork for such a summit during talks on Thursday.
"Today in Geneva we continue our work within the framework of the negotiation process. Bilateral meetings with the American delegation have begun with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner," said Ukrainian negotiator Umerov, as Al Arabiya from AFP (27/2).
Ukraine aims to "align positions" with the US ahead of new trilateral talks in March, he added.
Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev was present at the talks in Geneva on Thursday, although there was no indication he met with Ukrainian officials, according to Russian state media.
Dmitriev declined to comment when approached by the media after leaving the talks, according to a video circulating on pro-Kremlin media.
Meanwhile, Russia, which has signaled it will not give in to demands for full control of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, said on Thursday it was too early to estimate when a deal would be reached.
"Have you heard anything from us about the deadline? We have no deadline, we have a task. We are finishing it," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told state media.
It is known that US President Donald Trump has pushed for an end to the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, but so far has failed to broker any deal between Moscow and Kyiv.
Previous rounds of negotiations led by the US between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Geneva and Abu Dhabi have failed to produce a compromise, including on the crucial point of territory.
Russia and Ukraine routinely exchange the bodies of dead soldiers, one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring countries.
Talks between Moscow and Kyiv remain deadlocked over the fate of Donbas, an industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been the center of fighting.
Russia seeks to fully control Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, and has threatened to seize it by force if Kyiv does not surrender at the negotiating table.
However, Ukraine rejected the demands and signaled that they would not sign an agreement without security guarantees that would prevent Russia from invading again.
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