Left Out of High-Level Talks, Ukraine Tries Other Diplomatic Channels
The New York Times
While the United States and NATO speak with Russia this week, the Ukrainian government has been sidelined and is instead quietly pursuing separate negotiations with Moscow.
KYIV, Ukraine — Peace negotiations are usually thought to involve two sides brought together by a mediator trying to tease out possible compromises, far from the anger and destruction of the battlefield.
But talks starting in Geneva Monday on the eight-year-old war in Ukraine are different. The conflict — and an overtly threatened Russian invasion that the talks are intended to forestall — may be in Ukraine. But Ukraine will be missing from two of the three negotiating sessions scheduled for this week.
The absence of any concrete role for Ukraine in the talks has clearly unnerved the government in Kyiv. Fearing the talks will yield little or nothing, and with President Biden’s statement that the United States would not intervene militarily if Russia invades, Ukraine has quietly pursued its own negotiating track with Moscow.
