Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia began two days of US-brokered peace talks in Geneva yesterday, which will focus on the main issue of dispute - territory, as US President Donald Trump presses Kiev to act quickly to reach an agreement.
Trump is urging Moscow and Kiev to reach an agreement to end the war, even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has complained that his country is under the most pressure to make concessions.
Ahead of the talks, Russia carried out powerful air strikes across Ukraine overnight, causing extensive damage to the power grid in the southern port city of Odessa, which Zelensky said left tens of thousands of people without heat and water, Reuters reported.
Zelensky called on Kiev's allies to increase pressure on Russia to achieve a "real and just" peace agreement, through tougher sanctions and arms deliveries to Ukraine.
Russia demands that Ukraine cede the remaining 20 percent of the eastern Donetsk region, which Moscow has failed to capture - which Kiev refuses to do.
The Geneva round comes just days before the fourth anniversary, February 24, of Russia's full-scale invasion of its much smaller neighbor. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions from their homes, and left many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages severely devastated by the war.
Russia controls about 20 percent of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region, which it occupied before the 2022 invasion.
Trump repeatedly promised during the campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine in one day.
But by most measures, the war has gotten worse for Ukrainians since he returned to the White House. The New York Times reports that more civilians were killed and wounded in 2025 than the year before. More missiles and drones are hitting city centers. Russia has taken more territory in its slow advance in 2025 than in any year since 2022. Moscow has virtually destroyed Ukraine’s power grid during the country’s harshest winter in more than a decade.
“It was a difficult year, how could you imagine it otherwise?” said Oleksandr Polishchuk, whose wife was among 13 people killed when a rocket hit their apartment building in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in April.
“The shelling, you have to go to work, deal with household chores, no electricity, no heating. I think it was very difficult, terribly difficult.”
After taking office in January 2025, Trump has rejected the previous American approach to the war. He has sent conciliatory signals to Russian President Vladimir Putin while distancing the United States from Ukraine. American aid to Ukraine fell by 99 percent in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank. Trump has suspended American arms deliveries to Kiev unless Ukraine or its Western allies pay for them.
More civilians were killed and wounded in 2025 than the year before. More missiles and drones hit city centers. Russia's slow advances in 2025 captured more territory than in any year since 2022. Moscow virtually destroyed Ukraine's power grid during the country's harshest winter in more than a decade.
Russia has increased its own production of missiles, drones, grenades and mines. Moscow has used these weapons at an intensive pace, in part to strengthen its negotiating position.
As he has moved away from the Joe Biden administration’s policy of isolating Putin, Trump has managed to get Russia and Ukraine to discuss the terms of a settlement, including face-to-face meetings in recent weeks. Trump has largely set aside traditional diplomatic principles that he has argued have done nothing to end the war, turning to negotiators he sees as skilled at reaching agreements. He has also imposed sanctions that have cut off oil revenues that fuel Russia’s war machine.
But Putin has dragged out the negotiations for months, using them to buy time and continue his attacks. A year into Trump's second term and nearly four years after the Russian invasion, Putin has given no sign of backing down from his goals of seizing more Ukrainian territory and imposing Russian dominance, the New York Times reports.
Trump has admitted that ending the war is much harder than he thought. Ukrainian officials say the US president would have to take stronger measures to get Putin to change his mind.
Aside from occasional public criticism and oil sanctions, Putin has largely avoided Trump’s threats. In July, the US president said he would give Russia “about 10 or 12 days” to end the war before imposing new sanctions. He then announced a summit with Putin in Alaska, and the deadline passed. A month later, he again threatened “comprehensive sanctions.” But he also showed reporters a photo that Putin had sent him of their meeting in Alaska, calling it a sign of honor and respect.
Meanwhile, Russian attacks have inflicted increasing casualties on Ukrainians. Russia killed more than 2.500 Ukrainian civilians in 2025, more than in any year since 2022 and 20 percent more than in 2024, according to United Nations data.
Russia launched more than 53.000 long-range drones at civilian targets in Ukraine in 2025, almost five times more than in 2024, according to a database compiled by The New York Times based on Ukrainian Air Force figures.
Moscow is increasingly targeting city centers with ballistic missiles, which travel at such speeds that air defense systems have difficulty intercepting them.
According to that database, Russia has launched 154 such missiles at Ukraine this year, about three times more than in the same period last year.
Oleksandra Matviychuk, a Ukrainian human rights activist, said the human cost of the war has been erased from the peace talks, while the Trump administration is treating the negotiations as a real estate deal that would divide up both Ukraine and its natural resources. Trump has appointed real estate investors with whom he has personal ties to head the American delegation.
“For Putin, there are no borders, because the human dimension is not a priority in these negotiations,” Matviychuk said. “Politicians discuss natural minerals, Russia’s territorial interests, even Putin’s vision of Ukrainian history, but they don’t talk about people at all.”
Matviychuk, who heads the organization that awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for documenting war crimes committed by Moscow, asked this month on Facebook: “Why has Trump’s year of negotiations been the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion?”
The Times writes that many Ukrainians see Trump as someone loyal only to himself and feared that, in his rush to end the war, he would impose an unfair peace on Ukraine.
Ukraine's European allies have said Russia must not be rewarded for its aggression. But a 28-point peace plan, drawn up by US and Russian envoys late last year, has been seen in Ukraine as a demand for surrender. Ukrainian negotiators have rushed to soften its terms, and diplomatic outwit has been ongoing for months.
Zelensky has publicly complained that the Trump administration is putting more pressure on Ukraine than on Russia to compromise.
"Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often these concessions are considered exclusively in the context of Ukraine, not Russia," Zelensky said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.
As Ukrainians endure a brutal winter marked by Russian strikes, few in the country believe Putin will agree to end the fighting anytime soon.
Residents of the capital have been surviving with just two hours of electricity and heating per day for the past few weeks.
Many businesses have struggled this winter, including a cafe that used to be called Trump Pizza Station. The Times says the owner changed the name after Trump berated Zelensky at the White House nearly a year ago, and decided on a new name, Nolan.
Julia Baliosa, 18, a waitress at the place, said customers have stopped coming because they no longer go to nearby offices or the local university. The generator is expensive, and on a recent weekday, Nolan's cafe ran out of almost all its food at lunchtime - no pizza, no burgers, nothing hot.
“It’s practically impossible to live,” Baliosa said. “Just to live, really. People have become very angry. Very angry.”
The name Nolan means noble, which the owner found inspiring. When it reopened, the cafe said that Nolan “does not embellish reality or exaggerate.” But last week, it closed its doors for good.
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