Three weeks after the outbreak of war in the Middle East froze U.S.-led negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing to get them back on track.
In recent days, Mr. Zelensky has lamented that the talks have been “constantly postponed” and argued that they should resume even as the United States is preoccupied with the war in Iran. While few in Ukraine believe that the peace process had brought the war with Russia much closer to an end, the two sides were talking face to face and had narrowed some gaps.
On Thursday, the Kremlin said there was a “situational pause” in the negotiations, more evidence that whatever momentum had been building risked evaporating. But only hours later, Mr. Zelensky dropped a surprise announcement: Ukrainian officials were en route to the United States for weekend talks, he said.
“It is time to resume them,” Mr. Zelensky said in his evening address on Thursday.
The Ukrainian leader told reporters on Friday that Russian officials would not attend the negotiations. But he said it was important to hold the dialogue with the United States after it suspended sanctions on Russian oil last week, a move that Mr. Zelensky called “dangerous” for Ukraine. The suspension is intended to help bring down energy prices that have soared because of the Iran war.
Mr. Zelensky also said the U.S. meeting offered a chance to continue talks on guarantees for Ukraine’s postwar security.
There was no immediate comment from the White House or the Kremlin.
A meeting on American soil would represent something of a victory for Mr. Zelensky. Days ago, he told the BBC he had a “very bad feeling” about the effects of the Iran conflict on the war in his own country, as Russia benefits from higher oil prices and Gulf nations deplete global stocks of Patriot air-defense missiles. Mr. Zelensky has fought to keep the world’s focus on Ukraine, giving interviews and touring Europe.
“Now is a moment when we have several threats at once,” said Viktor Shlinchak, the head of the Institute of World Policy, a Ukrainian research group, adding that the threats were pushing Mr. Zelensky “to become more active.”
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators last met on Feb. 26 in Geneva, along with their American counterparts. The two warring sides had said that the next round of talks would be held in the United Arab Emirates. But on Feb. 28, the United States and Israel started attacking Iran, and the fighting soon spread through the Middle East.
Mr. Zelensky initially suggested simply moving the talks to another location, though he later acknowledged that the United States would be unable to participate. He told The New York Times that U.S. officials had suggested that Ukraine hold bilateral talks with Russia, but that he had rejected the idea because he wanted to stick to a trilateral format.
The Ukrainian leader has tried to find opportunities in what is otherwise a perilous moment for his country.
He sent Ukrainian military experts to help the United States and its Persian Gulf allies combat Iranian drones. As he drummed up support in European capitals and gave numerous interviews, he hammered home how the Middle East war intersected with Ukraine’s.
Mr. Zelensky has cast Ukraine’s defense expertise as a useful commodity in hopes of leveraging it into security partnerships that could yield vast profits for the country’s arms industry. His outreach is also an attempt to counter criticism from Washington that Ukraine only takes.
“I would like the U.S. not to perceive Ukraine as a country that merely asks for help,” Mr. Zelensky said Tuesday. “That is not the case.”
It remains to be seen whether that message will resonate in the White House.
President Trump, who said last year that Mr. Zelensky had “no cards” in negotiations, told Politico this month that the Ukrainian leader had “even less cards.” Those remarks did not go over well in Ukraine, not least because Kyiv’s forces have made modest gains on the battlefield in recent weeks.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast Mr. Zelensky, not President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as impeding peace. And the U.S. president has scoffed at Ukraine’s offer to help combat Iranian drones, saying that the “last person we need help from is Zelensky.”
Mr. Zelensky has brushed off Mr. Trump’s remarks as “rhetoric” and expressed gratitude for being allowed to purchase U.S. weapons, while suggesting a meeting with the American president.
The Ukrainian leader does not want to completely lose Mr. Trump’s support or make an enemy of him but also probably recognizes he “is not a friend of Ukraine,” said Mariia Zolkina, head of regional security and conflict studies at the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Ukrainian think tank.
She said having Mr. Trump distracted by the Iran war was not necessarily bad for Ukraine, which the United States has pressed to make difficult territorial concessions to Moscow.
“Every time he focused on Ukraine totally,” she said, “it was when he tried to push Ukraine for asymmetric compromise that benefited Russia more.”
Reporting was contributed by Oleksandr Chubko, Carlos Barragán, Jason Horowitz and Michael D. Shear.
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