Ukraine-Russia peace talks enter second day in Geneva

Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia were due to begin a second day of talks in Geneva on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the United States was putting undue pressure on him to ⁠bring an end to the four-year-old war.



The U.S.-mediated peace talks in Switzerland have been taking place as U.S. President Donald Trump has twice in recent days suggested it was up to Ukraine and Zelenskiy to take steps to ensure the talks were successful.



In an interview with U.S. website Axios published on Tuesday, Zelenskiy was quoted as saying that it was "not fair" that Trump kept publicly calling on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions in negotiating terms for a peace plan.



Zelenskiy also said any plan requiring Ukraine to give up territory that Russia had not captured in the eastern Donbas region would be rejected by Ukrainians if put to a referendum.



Zelenskiy thanked Trump again for his peacemaking efforts and told Axios that his conversations with the top U.S. negotiators, envoy Steve Witkoff and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not involve the same kind of pressure.