Ukraine will participate in negotiations with Russia and the United States “one way or another,” but peace talks will remain primarily bilateral, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
“We, of course, understand that our main counterpart in this process is Washington,” Peskov said, according to Russian state media. “One way or another, of course, Ukraine will participate in the negotiations. Of course, there will be a bilateral Russian-American track of this dialogue, and a track that, of course, will be connected with Ukraine’s involvement.”
Peskov’s remarks came after a whirlwind 24 hours in which U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and declared that negotiations between the U.S. and Russia to end the war in Ukraine would commence imminently, notably sidelining Ukrainian participation in his public messaging. At the same time, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a return to Ukraine’s old borders an “illusory goal.”
Welp I’m getting pretty fucking worried that this is gonna go down as our Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
Edit: all of the parallels there were intentional
It’s a closer parallel to the partitioning of Czechoslovakia actually… and for bonus points Germany reneged on that agreement before the fucking ink was dry and just claimed huge extra swathes of land… and I’d expect nothing less from fucking Putin.