The cease-fire that Iran and the United States announced this week opens a window to resume talks on ending the war in Ukraine, but that window will soon close, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in comments made public by his office on Thursday.
Talks on the fighting in Ukraine have been underway for more than a year with little to show for them, except for brief cease-fires last year. The negotiations stalled last month after their host, the United Arab Emirates, was hit by Iranian airstrikes. Iran struck targets in the Emirates and other Gulf nations as part of its response to attacks by Israel and the United States.
Mr. Zelensky, in comments to reporters on Wednesday, said any new Ukraine talks would have to make headway before summer, when campaigning starts in earnest for midterm elections in the United States.
“The United States will become even more focused on its internal processes,” Mr. Zelensky said. He spoke under the condition that his remarks would not be published until his office gave permission, which it did on Thursday.
Separately on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky told a gathering of local officials that he had held a video call with U.S. negotiators and expected peace talks to resume in the near future. That could be in the form of a three-way meeting with Russia or a round of shuttle diplomacy.
Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s envoy to the talks, has also said that there would have to be progress before the end of May, because of the U.S. election cycle.
Ukraine is bracing for a difficult spring and summer, Mr. Zelensky said, expressing skepticism about the prospects for a breakthrough even if talks resume soon.
The United States, he said, had a “domestic political deadline” for the Ukraine talks to progress. “There may be pressure on Ukraine,” he said. “There will also be pressure on the battlefield.”
Recently, Mr. Zelensky has highlighted his disagreements with the Trump administration. In an interview with a podcast, The Rest is Politics, released on Thursday, he said he had tried to draw the administration’s attention to intelligence assistance that he said Russia was providing to Iran. Mr. Zelensky said he made public the schedule of Russian satellite flyovers of U.S. bases in the Middle East that preceded Iranian strikes. Mr. Zelensky said he received no response. “The problem is they trust Putin. And it’s a pity.”
He said unspecified “partners” of Ukraine had objected to its stepped-up drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and other assets. Those strikes are meant to cut into the profits Russia is making on its exported oil, with the Iran war having driven prices higher. The United States has also eased its sanctions on Russian oil, hoping to bring prices down.
“We were asked to scale back strikes — meaning our responses to Russian attacks,” Mr. Zelensky said. “They believed this would have an impact on energy prices.”Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine was open to halting attacks if Russia stopped its strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. With a cease-fire in effect, he said, the United States should reimpose the sanctions on Russian oil sales.
Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014.
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