 "Russia, US to hold new talks on ties as Ukraine war reshapes diplomacy")
Russian and US teams are set to meet this week to discuss improving bilateral relations, which have deteriorated to their lowest point since the Cold War due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, a senior Russian diplomat announced on Sunday.
The talks come as Russian forces made advances in Ukraine last year, the fastest progress since the 2022 invasion began. US President Donald Trump has expressed his intention to broker a peace deal to end the war, which he claims has resulted in massive casualties.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow’s point man for relations with the US, said that a meeting at the level of departmental heads would take place at the end of the week.
”We are open to contacts with the American side, in particular, on irritants in bilateral relations,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by state news agency TASS.
”We are waiting for real progress when the meeting scheduled for the end of the coming week takes place.”
Ukraine’s NATO aspirations unlikely: Trump
Trump said on February 12 that it was not practical for Ukraine to get NATO alliance membership and that he had seen support for U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statement that Ukraine will not realistically return to its 2014 borders.
Trump has repeatedly said that he believes Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy want to do a deal.
Russia’s grip on Ukraine tightens as war drags on
As the war enters its fourth year, Russia controls nearly one fifth of Ukraine – or an area about the size of the U.S. state of Ohio – including Crimea which Russia annexed in 2014, about 75% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions and more than 99% of the Luhansk region.
Russia says the land it controls is now Russian land under Russian law and the Russian nuclear umbrella, a position Ukraine and its Western European backers have said they will never recognise or accept.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsLast June, Putin set out his terms for an end to the war: Ukraine must officially drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw troops from the entirety of the territory of the four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia.
With inputs from agencies
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