Russia, Ukraine accuse each other of delay over Trump-backed talks

US envoy for Ukraine reiterated a willingness to keep Ukraine out of NATO, a key Russian demand for peace

Russian President Vladimir Putin during a videoconference. Photo: Pavel Byrkin/ AP

Ukraine and Russia accused each other of foot-dragging toward a second round of direct ceasefire talks backed by the Trump administration that are set to begin Monday.

The US urged Russia to continue peace talks and reiterated its willingness to keep Ukraine’s ambition to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation off the table, in line with one of Moscow’s demands.

General Keith Kellogg, America’s top envoy for Ukraine, said President Trump was frustrated by Russia’s strikes on Ukrainian cities and its delay in producing a document listing its terms.

“He’s put forward some reasonable proposals, reasonable discussions, and he’s seen a level of unreasonableness that really frustrates him,” Kellogg said of Trump in an interview on Thursday with ABC.

Russia has proposed another round of talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, and the Kremlin on Friday said the Russian delegation was already en route to the Turkish city.

Ukraine has insisted that in advance of any meeting, Moscow provide a document listing its conditions. Moscow said it hadn’t received confirmation of Kyiv’s participation in the Monday talks.

Trump has said he would abandon efforts to broker peace in Ukraine if the two sides don’t make headway. Earlier this week, he said there must be progress within two weeks for the US to remain engaged.

The Trump administration has also recently shown reluctance to continue as mediator, after spurring a process that led to the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv since 2022 earlier this month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Despite recent dialogue, Russia’s and Ukraine’s positions remain far apart, and they haven’t agreed over even initial terms under which negotiations would take place. Each has accused the other of stalling.

“Russia is drawing the war out,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Thursday. “The so-called memorandum, which they promised and allegedly spent over a week preparing — no one has seen it yet.”

Zelensky accused Russia of deliberately delaying its memorandum and planning for any meetings between the two delegations to fail, while portraying Kyiv as the obstacle to peace.

Russia is steadily inching forward on the battlefield. On a call earlier this month, Trump told European leaders that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t ready to end the war because he thinks he is winning, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Russia said its list of conditions wouldn’t be made public. But one demand it has made repeatedly is a binding agreement stipulating that Ukraine never becomes a member of NATO. Kellogg on Thursday said that the US considers this a fair demand.

“We’ve said that to us, Ukraine coming into NATO is not on the table, and we’re not the only country that says that,” he said. “That’s one of the issues that Russia will bring up.”

Kellogg said Ukraine had produced its own memorandum with 22 terms that the US considers reasonable and he called on Russia to provide its own list of terms.

The first round of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine for years took place on May 16 and involved both sides outlining their positions. It resulted in an agreement over a swap involving 1,000 captured soldiers from either side, an exchange which began over the weekend.

Ukrainian soldiers hold a national flag over the coffin of 26-year-old Ukrainian serviceman Yaroslav Shvets, who died as a result of wounds received at the front. Picture: AFP

Kellogg said the next round would focus on trying to merge the two sides’ documents and producing a list of terms they might both consider a basis for long-term peace. National security advisers of Germany, France and Britain would join discussions on the memorandum with the US, Kellogg said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia also wants to agree over the safety of navigation in the Black Sea, from which Russia has removed many of its warships after Ukrainian drone and missile attacks.

The two sides have continued to exchange salvos of drone strikes on each other’s cities. Russia on Thursday said debris from downed Ukrainian drones had damaged several residential buildings in and around Moscow. Ukraine said Russia continues to launch record numbers of explosive munitions.

Earlier this week, Zaur Gurtsyev, a Russian official and ex-serviceman who helped lead Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s Mariupol in 2022, was killed in an explosion in Stavropol near the border with Ukraine. Kyiv hasn’t commented on Russian suggestions that it was responsible for the blast.

Wall Street Journal