Ukrainian and US negotiating teams have sat down for a fresh round of talks in Switzerland with a focus on post-war reconstruction and preparing a future trilateral meeting with Russia.
The talks in the city of Geneva began on February 26, hours after Russian forces rained down drones and missiles on multiple Ukrainian regions -- and also after Moscow sent Kyiv bodies of people apparently killed in the now four-year long war.
"A bilateral meeting with the American delegation has begun — with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner," wrote Ukraine's chief negotiator Rustem Umerov in a social media post.
Umerov confirmed that a "prosperity package" would be discussed, including issues such as economic support and investment -- along with "the humanitarian track and the issue of possible exchanges."
Russia and Ukraine have held numerous exchanges of prisoners and remains of killed soldiers during the conflict. On February 26, officials from the two countries said Russia had returned what it said were the bodies 1,000 Ukrainians.
The authorities in Kyiv said they "may belong to Ukrainian defenders" and that work would begin to identify them. Vladimir Medinsky, a key aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Ukraine had returned the bodies of 35 Russian soldiers in exchange.
Alongside the diplomacy and the exchange, the brutal reality of the war continued.
“Dozens of people are known to have been injured as a result of this attack, including children,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media after an overnight barrage that he said included 420 drones and 39 missiles.
Targets included housing blocks, gas infrastructure, and electrical substations, Zelenskyy said.
Prior to the talks, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio -- who is not in attendance -- said that only Washington could drive negotiations to end the war.
"The United Nations isn't going to do it. France isn't going to do it. The EU isn't going to do it. The Russians won't even speak to them. So we don't want to walk away from -- we know that, at the end, that war in Ukraine does not have a military solution," he said.
"If we forfeit that role, no one else can do it," he added.
US President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy had a call on February 25.
In a social media post following the call, Zelenskyy noted that Trump’s envoys participated in the discussion, which focused heavily on the agenda for the upcoming rounds of diplomacy.
“We expect this meeting to create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level,” Zelenskyy wrote, adding that Trump “supports this sequence of steps.” He characterized a direct leaders' summit as “the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war.”
The meeting in Geneva comes two days after somber ceremonies across Ukraine marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion and follows trilateral Russia-Ukraine-US talks on February 17-18.
Little substantive information has emerged from previous meetings, beyond vague descriptions of them being “difficult” in some areas while achieving “progress” in others.
After four years of full-scale war, estimates of overall casualty figures vary. But one recent report put the number of killed, wounded, and missing at 1.2 million Russians and 500,000-600,000 Ukrainians.
The World Bank said on February 23 that reconstructing the Ukrainian economy would cost an estimated $588 billion over a decade.
