A Ukrainian delegation is set to meet U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys in Geneva as part of preparations for another round of trilateral talks with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday. Zelenskyy said Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, is due to hold talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Geneva on Thursday.
Zelenskyy said the Thursday meeting would focus on details of a possible postwar recovery plan for Ukraine. He also said it would include preparations for an upcoming trilateral meeting with Moscow officials, as Ukraine continues trying to narrow differences that have remained unresolved despite U.S.-brokered diplomacy this year.
Zelenskyy added that he had tasked Umerov with discussing a possible prisoner exchange. He said Ukraine expects the U.S.-brokered talks with Russia to take place next week.
The diplomacy is being pursued amid ongoing fighting that Ukrainian officials say continues to evolve on the ground. Zelenskyy, speaking as the war approaches its fifth year, said Russia has not defeated Ukraine or broken what he described as Ukrainian resolve, despite Russia’s larger, better equipped army and heavy bombardment of civilian areas.
Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian forces have pushed Russia’s army back at points along the approximately 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line in eastern Ukraine in recent months, citing reporting from the Institute for the Study of War. He did not say the push represented an advance into major new offensives, but ISW said the “significant gains” were the biggest since 2024 and that they were unlikely to develop into major offensives amid Ukraine’s troop shortage; the think tank said the gains would likely disrupt Russian plans for a spring-summer offensive.
Ukraine has continued long-range drone strikes against targets deep inside Russia, Zelenskyy said, describing them as an almost nightly barrage of military and allied infrastructure. Separate from the diplomacy, he cited Russian civilian and military impact from strikes including a Ukrainian drone attack on the Dorogobuzh fertilizer plant in Russia’s Smolensk region that he said killed seven workers and injured 10, according to Gov. Vasily Anokhin.
Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian authorities reported that Russia attacked with 115 drones overnight, including a strike on a village in southern Zaporizhzhia district that killed four people and injured a child, according to the State Emergency Service. He said the U.S. State Department has expressed displeasure with Ukraine’s recent attacks on the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, which he said Kyiv’s chief envoy to Washington described as impacting U.S. oil interests in Kazakhstan.
In remarks to an international leaders’ forum in Kyiv, Witkoff said previous talks with Russia and Ukraine had largely resolved the question of security guarantees. He also said Washington is not pressuring Ukraine to concede on any point and that the Russians have shown “some moderation,” AP reported.
Witkoff told the Yalta European Strategy forum that both sides have been engaging with the peace effort, with almost daily conversations taking place between officials. He said he would meet Umerov in Geneva, with the talks possibly followed by a trilateral meeting in Florida.
Separately, Geneva is also expected to host nuclear talks on Thursday between the United States and Iran, AP reported, underscoring that the U.S.-linked diplomacy in Switzerland spans both Ukraine-related negotiations and talks on Iran’s nuclear program.