US President Donald Trump has said his negotiators and Russia’s Vladimir Putin had a “very good meeting” despite no deal being reached.
This came as Putin accused European leaders of trying to scupper his peace talks with the US, saying their tweaks to a plan to end the war were “unacceptable”.
The BBC reported that Ukrainian officials are preparing to meet US negotiators, after talks between the US and Russia over a possible end to the war.
University of Waikato international law professor Al Gillespie told The Front Page it’s difficult to know where the initial 28-point plan sits now.
“It starts with a 28-point plan that was effectively a broad agreement between America and Russia. It then turns to a 19-point plan, which is effectively between America and Ukraine.
“It then goes back to Moscow, and it’s somewhere between the 28 points and the 19 points, but it’s coming down to a few areas where we can’t get agreements on, which primarily are about territory, the security force, and accountability,” he said.
Russia’s conditions include everything from Ukraine never being allowed to join Nato to halving the size of the Ukrainian army.
“That kind of condition, where you restrict the scale of a country’s armed forces or their weapons that they have, is what you normally get when a country is defeated in war, not in a negotiated peace agreement.
" It’s the kind of thing that you would see after World War I or World War II. But what we know, of course, is Ukraine has not been defeated, and in many ways it’s holding its ground quite well," he said.
It also includes handing back most of Russia’s frozen assets, to which the likes of France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni are opposed.
“The question of assets is a curious one because with the sanctions we’ve had, we’ve put penalties on Russia for its illegal act, and part of the penalties involves seizing assets.
“There is a serious legal question about freezing the assets and then disposing of them. The risk, and it’s uncertain, is that if you dispose of them, you could become legally liable for them in the future when peace resumes.
“We’ve seen an increase in European countries giving more money to Ukraine with regards to weaponry, and that expansion is not just with the European countries,” he said.
The European Commission has proposed using frozen Russian assets or international borrowing to raise €90 billion ($181.91b) for Ukraine to cover its military and basic services.
At the same time, Australia announced $95m to Ukraine, including $50m ($57.2m) in cash for a weapons fund. New Zealand pledged $15m to the same fund.
“The defence of Ukraine has significant implications not only for the security of Europe, but also for the Indo-Pacific,” Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said.
The Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) aims to speed up the delivery of critical weapons and equipment to Ukraine so it can defend itself.
New Zealand’s contribution to the PURL will only be used for the procurement of weapons or equipment that align with New Zealand’s international obligations and domestic policies.
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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