There will be no Russian delegation at the upcoming meeting with Ukraine in the USA, Kremlin speaker Dmitriy Peskov said on 20 March.
“No, these will be bilateral contacts between Ukrainians and Americans,” the Russian state-run TASS news agency quoted him as saying.
The day before, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainian representatives were due to meet with representatives of the United States on 21 March.
“It is important that there are signals from the US side regarding the readiness to continue working in the available negotiation formats to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. There was a negotiating pause, it is time to end it. And we are doing everything we can to make the negotiations really meaningful. The Ukrainian team – the political part of the negotiating team – is on its way, and we expect to meet in the United States this Saturday,” he said.
Several rounds of trilateral meetings between Ukraine, the United States and Russia on ending the war took place during January and February. No specific results were reported. However, as a result of the 5 February meeting, the delegations reached agreement on a prisoner-of-war exchange-the first in five months.
Another meeting, which was scheduled for early March in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, was postponed indefinitely due to the escalating situation in the Middle East.