Zelenskyy says Russia is stalling as Geneva talks produce little concrete progress

What happened in Geneva: U.S.-facilitated delegations from Kyiv and Moscow met for two days in Geneva, returning negotiations to Europe after prior limited sessions elsewhere. Meetings were short and technical rather than decisively diplomatic — the second day included a rostered session of roughly two hours — and ended without an agreed timetable for follow-up rounds or a framework for verified pullbacks.

Positions on the table: Ukraine reiterated that any arrangement must preserve full sovereignty and be backed by firm, verifiable security guarantees before Kyiv would contemplate front-line adjustments, while Russia pressed for internationally recognised control of occupied districts in the east. Kyiv proposed localized, monitored withdrawals in specific sectors as a contingency measure but rejected any formula amounting to a transfer of sovereignty.

Diplomatic signals and immediate outputs: Negotiators turned modest technical gains into a concrete near-term deliverable: diplomats confirmed a reciprocal prisoner exchange of 314 detainees (157 from each side). Delegations also discussed reactivating military-to-military channels, incident-notification hotlines and other confidence-building steps, and Washington has floated hosting later talks in the United States — an option Kyiv has signalled it would consider as part of a pathway to higher-level engagement.

Operational and humanitarian fallout: Hours before and during the Geneva sessions a large coordinated aerial campaign struck energy infrastructure across at least a dozen regions, with Ukrainian and Western sources reporting a swarm of roughly 396–400 unmanned aerial systems accompanied by dozens of guided missiles (estimates of missiles vary). Strikes damaged substations, switchyards and thermal plants serving Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa, triggering rolling outages that forced hospitals and metro systems onto backup generators and prompted Kyiv to request emergency electricity imports from Poland.

The energy-wave damage, described by firms including DTEK as among the most severe this winter, was compounded by subfreezing temperatures that delayed fuel and spare-part deliveries and complicated restoration. There were also direct civilian tolls reported in the strikes, increasing domestic pressure on Kyiv’s negotiating stance and underscoring the humanitarian stakes behind Ukraine’s redlines.

Shifts in delegation composition and wider implications: Diplomats noted a personnel change in the Russian team — replacing an intelligence chief with a presidential aide known for a harder-line posture — a move that may reduce space for technical, military-to-military bargaining and harden negotiating redlines. Mediators have privately discussed an ambitious goal of an agreement by June, but analysts and Ukrainian officials caution that compressed timelines will require far stronger external leverage, credible verification and enforcement mechanisms than are currently evident.

Outlook: In the near term Geneva appears more likely to yield episodic confidence-building measures — prisoner swaps, tactical restraints, recharge of military channels and targeted humanitarian arrangements — than a comprehensive political settlement. Without synchronized external pressure, transparent monitoring and concrete security backstops, the talks will probably manage escalation rather than resolve the core sovereignty dispute.