By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) – Peace talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine on ending the Ukraine war, the deadliest European conflict since World War Two, are on pause amid the Iran war, the Izvestia newspaper reported on Thursday, citing Russian officials.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who last year said he wanted to be remembered as a peacemaker, vowed to end the Ukraine war but has since said that efforts to resolve the conflict have been one of his biggest disappointments.
The U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran has diverted U.S. attention away from Ukraine and triggered soaring prices for oil and gas – of which Russia is a major global producer and exporter.
Izvestia, which in Soviet times represented official state views and is now under European Union sanctions, said in a front-page story that the Kremlin had confirmed a pause in talks on Ukraine and that the Iran war could push Kyiv towards compromise.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the paper that Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev would continue working on investment and economic cooperation, but “the trilateral group is on pause”.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, triggering the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Russia and Ukraine held talks in Turkey last year, and have conducted several more sessions with U.S. mediation in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year. But they remain far apart on Russia’s demand for Ukraine to cede control of the whole of its eastern Donetsk region.
GABBARD: RUSSIA ‘HAS MAINTAINED THE UPPER HAND’
Ukraine and European leaders say that Russia cannot be allowed to achieve its aims after what they cast as an imperial-style land grab. If Russia wins, European powers say, then it will one day attack NATO. Moscow says such claims are ridiculous and that it has no intention of attacking a NATO member.
“During the past year, Russia has maintained the upper hand in its war against Ukraine,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday.
“US-led negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv are ongoing. Until such an agreement is met, Moscow is likely to continue fighting a war of attrition with the aim of degrading Kyiv’s ability and will to resist.”
President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly said he is open to discussing peace, casts the war as a watershed moment in relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Russia has insisted that Ukraine withdraw from the parts of the Donbas region which it still controls. Russian figures indicate Ukraine controls just under 10% of the Donbas region.
In 2024, Putin said Russia’s terms for ending the war were that Ukraine officially abandon its ambition of joining NATO and withdraw entirely from four regions Russia claims as its own territory.
Kyiv says it will not cede land that Moscow’s forces have failed to capture in nearly four years of war.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Tom Hogue and Andrew Heavens)
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