Ukraine calls for talks with Russia in the coming week

Ukraine calls for talks with Russia in the coming week

The Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Selenskyj has announced that it will be demanding a meeting with Russia next week to advance the negotiations on an armistice. In his daily speech on Saturday, he said that the head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, had already made a proposal for another meeting with the Russian side.

Need for an armistice

"The dynamics of the negotiations have to improve. We have to do everything we can to achieve an armistice. The Russian side may no longer shy away from decisions about prisoner exchanges, the return of children and the termination of killings," emphasized Selenskyj. "A meeting at the management level is crucial to secure real peace. Ukraine is ready for such a meeting," he added.

reactions from Russia

In the meantime, the Russian state medium of Tass reported that a source from the negotiation team of Russia confirmed that they had received the proposal from Kiev for a meeting. The last round of the ceasefire negotiations in Istanbul quickly ended at the beginning of June, with the delegates from Russia and Ukraine only talking to each other a little more than an hour before they had to stop the conversations. According to the Russian media, Russia made maximum territorial demands as part of its preconditions for an armistice. Ukraine previously rejected a territorial concessions in exchange for peace.

threaten to high tariffs

Selenskyj's request for discussions comes immediately after an offer of US President Donald Trump, the Russian President Vladimir Putin a To give time windows to achieve an armistice before the United States raises high tariffs in Russian goods and impose "secondary tariffs" on goods from countries that buy Russian oil. "We will raise very high tariffs if we have no agreement in 50 days," Trump said during a meeting with NATO general secretary Mark Rutte in the Oval Office at the beginning of this week.

Trump expresses frustration

"I use the trade for many things," added Trump. "But he's great to end wars." In the past few weeks, Trump has expressed increasing frustration with President Putin and even complained that Putin's assurances of progress in the ceasefire "bullshit". Nevertheless, Western analysts and Ukrainian officials will stop the Russian offensive in the summer in the coming weeks. In addition, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the threatened tariffs from Trump as mere chatter.

Lavrov's answer to Trump's threats

"Fifty days - that used to be 24 hours," said Lavrov. "It used to be 100 days; we have already lived through all of this."