{"id":40787,"date":"2026-02-18T09:04:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=40787"},"modified":"2026-02-18T09:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T09:04:26","slug":"russia-ukraine-peace-talks-enter-second-day-in-geneva-with-pressure-on-kyiv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=40787","title":{"rendered":"Russia-Ukraine peace talks enter second day in Geneva with pressure on Kyiv"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia were due to begin a second day of talks in Geneva on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the United States was putting undue pressure on him to bring an end to the four-year-old war.<\/p>\n<p>The US-mediated peace talks in Switzerland have been taking place as US President Donald Trump has twice in recent days suggested it was up to Ukraine and Zelenskiy to take steps to ensure the talks were successful.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with the US website Axios published on Tuesday, Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that it was \u201cnot fair\u201d that Trump kept publicly calling on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions in negotiating terms for a peace plan.<\/p>\n<p>Read: South Korea probes civilians for sending drones to north, straining ties<\/p>\n<p>Zelenskiy also said any plan requiring Ukraine to give up territory that Russia had not captured in the eastern Donbas region would be rejected by Ukrainians if put to a referendum. \u201cI hope it is just his tactics and not the decision,\u201d Axios quoted Zelenskiy as saying in the interview.<\/p>\n<p>Zelenskiy again thanked Trump for his peacemaking efforts and told Axios that his conversations with the top US negotiators, envoy Steve Witkoff and the president\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not involve the same kind of pressure.<\/p>\n<p>Trump told reporters on Monday that \u201cUkraine had better come to the table fast. That\u2019s all I\u2019m telling you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine\u2019s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, head of the National Security and Defence Council, said that Tuesday\u2019s talks had focused on \u201cpractical issues and the mechanics of possible decisions\u201d, without providing details.<\/p>\n<p>Russian officials made no comment on the talks. However, Russian news agencies quoted a source as saying that the talks were \u201cvery tense\u201d and lasted six hours in different bilateral and trilateral formats.<\/p>\n<p>Read More: US will match Chinese low-yield N-tests<\/p>\n<p>Before the talks began, Umerov played down hopes for a significant step forward in Geneva, saying the Ukrainian delegation was working \u201cwithout excessive expectations\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In his nightly address on Tuesday, Zelenskiy said he was waiting for a report from the negotiating team in Geneva. \u201cWe are ready to move quickly towards a worthy agreement to end the war,\u201d Zelenskiy said. \u201cThe question for the Russians is: just what do they want?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Geneva meeting follows two rounds of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that concluded without a major breakthrough, as the two sides remained far apart on key issues such as control of territory in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Early on Wednesday, Witkoff said Trump\u2019s efforts to get Russia and Ukraine talking were yielding fruit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPresident Trump\u2019s success in bringing both sides of this war together has brought about meaningful progress, and we are proud to work under his leadership to stop the killing in this terrible conflict,\u201d he said on X. \u201cBoth parties agreed to update their respective leaders and continue working towards a deal.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia were due to begin a second day of talks in Geneva on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the United States was putting undue pressure on him to bring an end to the four-year-old war. The US-mediated peace talks in Switzerland have been taking place as US President Donald [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}