Latest round of trilateral talks on Ukraine ends without agreement on key issues, new talks to be held soon

GENEVA -- Days before the fourth anniversary of the start of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the two-day talks among Ukraine, the United States and Russia, marking the third round of trilateral talks this year, concluded on Wednesday with no breakthrough on key issues.

The first-day talks lasted six hours in both bilateral and trilateral formats, while the second-day talks lasted two hours, Russian media reported.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that no agreement on key issues was reached, according to media reports.

"We can see that some groundwork has been done, but for now, positions differ because the negotiations were not easy," Zelensky told reporters in a WhatsApp chat on Wednesday.

Ukraine's chief negotiator Rustem Umerov, also Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council Secretary, said that the work was intense and subjective.

"There is progress, but no details at this stage," He wrote in a Facebook post.

Zelensky also told Ukrainian media that monitoring of a ceasefire with US participation, as well as sensitive political issues such as Donbas and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, were all discussed during the talks.

Describing the talks as difficult but business-like, Russia's presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky noted that a new round of negotiations will be held in the near future.

No documents were signed during the talks, RIA Novosti reported Wednesday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that the Russian delegation had clear instructions to act within the framework of understanding from the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump that was held in the US city of Anchorage, Alaska in August last year.

Umerov said on Facebook that the next stage is to reach the required level of consensus to make well-known decisions for the presidents' consideration. He emphasized that the ultimate goal remains unchanged: a just and sustainable peace.

A separate meeting with representatives of the United States and European countries, including France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, was also held on Tuesday, Umerov wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

Two previous rounds of trilateral talks, held in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 23-24 and Feb. 4-5, did not resolve key territorial issues.

Fighting even continued between Russia and Ukraine before Tuesday's talks.

Safet Music, a security expert in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told Xinhua that diplomacy serves more as a tool of conflict management than resolution, as the situation has entered a prolonged conflict of attrition in which neither Moscow nor Kiev can achieve a decisive breakthrough without enormous costs.

"The Ukraine-Russia conflict is exhausting all parties concerned and draining both Russian and European human and material resources, with no end in sight," Nasser Saidi, founder and president of Nasser Saidi & Associates, shared his view with Xinhua.