Before Washington meeting with Donald Trump, Zelenskyy says Russia rebuffing calls for ceasefire makes it harder to achieve peace deal to end the more than three-year-old conflict. What we know on day 1,271.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia refusing to accept a ceasefire was complicating efforts to end Moscow’s more than three-year-long conflict, after a summit between the US and Russian presidents yielded no deal on ending the war: “We see that Russia rebuffs numerous calls for a ceasefire and has not yet determined when it will stop the killing. This complicates the situation,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post late Saturday. “If they lack the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater – peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades.” Trump has said that he had agreed with Putin that a peace deal should be sought without the prior ceasefire that Ukraine and its European allies, until now with US support, have demanded. Ukrainian and European leaders fear that a straight-to-peace deal, skipping over a preliminary ceasefire, gives Moscow an upper hand in talks.
