Washington and Kyiv yesterday held brief talks in Saudi Arabia, a day after hours of US-Russia negotiations on halting the fighting in Ukraine ended without any breakthroughs announced.
US President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched more than three years ago and hopes the latest round of talks in the Saudi Arabian capital would pave the way for a ceasefire.
Kyiv earlier this month agreed to a US-proposed unconditional ceasefire, but Moscow had turned it down, with Ukraine and its European allies accusing it of not wanting peace.
Photo: Reuters
“The talks are over. All details will be announced later,” a Ukrainian source told a small group of reporters long after saying the meeting had begun.
The negotiations between Ukrainian and US officials come after hours of Russian-US meetings that yielded no announcement on any truce.
In Moscow, the Kremlin said the “content” of its talks with the US a day earlier would not be made public, saying it was still “analyzing” the results of negotiations with the US.
“They are being analyzed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “The content of these talks will definitely not be publicized.”
The Kremlin said contacts with Washington would continue, but there was no “specific” date for another meeting.
Russian news agencies had reported that Russia and the US plan to release a joint statement on the results of the talks. There was no sign from Moscow that it would agree to any truce.
Those fresh conversations come as both Russia and Ukraine escalate their attacks on the ground, with Kyiv saying its air defense units had downed 78 out of 139 drones launched by Russia yesterday.
In Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, officials said the toll from a Russian strike a day earlier climbed to 101 wounded, including 23 children.
The strike hit a residential area in the city near the Russian border as negotiations were taking place in Riyadh. The local administration in Sumy said 14 adults and 16 children were in hospital, with one adult and one child in “serious condition.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Moscow of wanting to gain a battlefield advantage before agreeing to any ceasefire. The Kremlin has downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution since rhetoric around a possible halt in fighting escalated with the election of Trump.
A Russian negotiator had said earlier yesterday that Moscow would continue “useful” talks with US representatives, but would aim to involve the UN and other nations.
Ukraine has repeatedly accused the Kremlin of trying to put off any serious discussion of implementing a halt in hostilities.
The negotiator spoke a day after the US and Russian teams held 12 hours of talks in a luxury hotel in Saudi Arabia. At a previous round of talks this month in Jeddah, Kyiv agreed to a proposed 30-day ceasefire that was subsequently rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Officials are studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, an agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS