Ukraine has faced repeated pressure from US President Donald Trump to agree to a deal that could mean painful concessions, as Russian forces pound its power grid and slowly advance on the battlefield, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
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As the delegations met for a second day at a hotel in the Swiss city, under the mediation of US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Zelenskiy had called the first day “difficult”.
“We can state that Russia is trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage,” he wrote on X.
Moments after his statement, the delegations broke off the talks and said they would meet again in the future, without providing a date.
Russia’s chief negotiator, former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, described the talks as “difficult, but business-like”.
Medinsky — whom Ukrainian officials have accused of engaging in history lectures rather than substantive talks — spoke with the Ukrainians for nearly two hours after formal talks ended, according to a representative of Kyiv’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov.
A spokesperson for Zelensky said the formal part of the talks had addressed territory in Ukraine’s east and the fate of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, both sticking points since the beginning of the process.
Moscow wants Ukraine to cede the roughly 20 per cent of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian forces have been unable to conquer — something Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.
