After discussions in Saudi Arabia this week, the White House said the warring countries had agreed to “develop measures to implement the agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities in Russia and Ukraine.”
Those talks were sequestered at Moscow’s request, so while both Ukrainian and Russian parties were in Saudi Arabia at the same time, the delegations did not speak to each other.
Washington wants the warring nations to engage in talks with each other, but they must first “build confidence” in each other — which could happen if both sides adhere to the partial cease-fires, Special Presidential Envoy to Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg told The Post on Tuesday.
“President Trump wants to see both Ukraine and Russia in talks together,” Kellogg said. “The question of settling when and how that happens will be the result of what we call confidence-building measures over time.”
International leaders and foreign policy experts have said they suspect Putin of trying to prolong cease-fire talks without any serious intent of ending the war.
Even Trump called out Russia for “dragging their feet” in negotiations after Putin immediately went back on his word and launched a drone attack on Mykolaiv, a port city in Southern Ukraine near the Black Sea.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian president is drawing out the ongoing peace negotiations so he can buy time for an offensive against the Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts this spring, the French media outlet Le Figaro reported Thursday.
Putin had originally wanted to carry out that plan last fall, but Ukraine’s seven-month incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast distracted Moscow’s forces and stopped the plan, Zelensky said.
That operation wrapped up earlier this month, with Ukrainian forces ceding the Russian territory back to Moscow.
Putin at the Murmansk summit also called for Zelensky’s removal — and revealed plans to replace him with a “transitional administration … to organize a Democratic presidential election that would result in the coming to power of a competent government that would have the confidence of the people, and then begin negotiations with these authorities on a peace agreement and sign legitimate documents.”
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