One person has been murdered in Ukraine and one in Russia in a lethal drone strike exchange that has raised questions about the likelihood of a truce prior to the next round of war-ending talks.
As the conflict approaches its fifth year, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have indicated obstacles to reaching a Geneva solution, which coincides with the news of the dead.
It frequently seems that the two sides “are talking about different things” in negotiations, Zelenskyy told world leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, even though he thinks “substantive” progress will be made during the trilateral summit next week.
Zelenskyy stated, “The Americans frequently bring up the subject of concessions, and all too frequently, those concessions are only discussed in the context of Ukraine, not Russia.”
Rubio stated that it’s questionable if Moscow is genuinely interested in reaching a peace agreement.
Prior to the same Munich gathering, he stated, “We don’t know if the Russians are serious about ending the war.” “We’re going to keep testing it.”
Russia’s demand that Ukrainian soldiers completely leave the areas of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region that it still controls is one of the most controversial topics in the negotiations.
If a ceasefire is struck, Ukraine wants Western security guarantees to prevent Russia from relaunching its invasion, as it has refused a unilateral pullout.
Citing scheduling conflicts, Rubio skipped a meeting with European and NATO leaders on the margins of Friday’s first day of the Munich summit that focused on Ukraine.
Zelenskyy emphasized in Munich on Saturday that Russia should not be allowed to get away with attacking Ukraine. He expressed his hope that European nations will increase their participation in the peace talks and that the United States would continue to be involved.
While US President Donald Trump deserves credit for advancing the negotiations, Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said Al Jazeera that he should exert more pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than Zelenskyy.
Despite the fact that Trump’s prior demands have not produced a breakthrough, Zelenskyy stated last week that the US had given the warring sides till June to come to an agreement.
Military matters like a potential buffer zone and ceasefire monitoring were allegedly the main topics of two prior rounds of trilateral negotiations in Abu Dhabi, which were chaired by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Later, Zelenskyy claimed to have spoken with Kushner and Witkoff.
According to many estimates, since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians have died, making the conflict the deadliest in Europe since World War II.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told the conference that Russia is suffering “crazy losses” in Ukraine, with over 65,000 soldiers dead on the battlefield in the last two months.
Separately, Rutte stated at a media roundtable that Russia would not attempt to attack NATO at this time since the alliance is strong enough. “If they attack us now, we will win every battle with Russia, and we must ensure that this remains the case in two, four, or six years.”
According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, one of the most recent victims was an elderly woman who was murdered on Saturday when a Russian drone struck a residential building in the Black Sea port city of Odesa.
Three children, including two-year-old twins and their father, were also killed by Russian strikes in the northern Kharkiv region on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy said Russia committed over 6,000 drone strikes against Ukraine in January alone. However, he stated that Ukraine will soon manufacture enough interceptors to render Russia’s Shahed drones, which are built in Iran, “meaningless.”
Additionally, he informed the Munich conference that Russian attacks had crippled all of Ukraine’s power plants.
According to Governor Alexander Bogomaz, a Ukrainian drone struck a car in the Bryansk border region of Russia, killing a civilian.
According to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, the strikes occurred the day after a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod, which is close to the Ukrainian border, left two people dead and five injured.
Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, on the other hand, charged that Moscow was committing “energy terror” by attacking power plants in the dead of winter.
Goncharenko told Al Jazeera in Munich, “I can’t call it any other way because when it’s minus 20 Celsius in Kyiv and you don’t have heating and you don’t have electricity in your apartment, you’re just freezing and that is awful.”
“I believe that the United States ought to start applying serious pressure to Russia. Indeed, they are present at the table, but because the current discussions are not genuine, it is time to exert significant pressure on them to engage in genuine negotiations.
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