A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Senior officials from several countries will meet in London today to talk of a possible ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
These talks will include the United States, but not the top diplomat. It will no longer involve Secretary of State Marco Rubio, nor President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff. The U.S., you'll recall, has wanted to go its own way in brokering a ceasefire, while Europeans have focused more on supporting Ukraine. And the Europeans take the lead in the meeting today.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Joining us now to share some of the details about this meeting is journalist Willem Marx in London. So Willem, who's hosting? Who's taking part? And what's the goal here?
WILLEM MARX: Well, A, the talks will be hosted by the British foreign secretary, David Lammy. They'll include officials from the U.S., Ukraine, France, Germany. The most senior U.S. official attending now will be President Trump's envoy for Ukraine, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg. And really at the heart of these talks will be an attempt to knit together the sometimes kind of disparate European and American visions for how a peace road map could be built.
The Europeans have for the last couple of months continued to really insist that support for Ukraine, whether that's military, political or economic, is going to be crucial to ensure that Russian President Vladimir Putin is forced to negotiate on more equal terms, shall we say. But members of the U.S. administration have been briefing the media over the past few days that there are now options on the table, at least from their perspective, that would include the recognition by Ukraine of territory currently held by the invaders, Russia.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, how have Ukrainians responded to that?
MARX: Well, not well, as you might imagine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out the possibility that Ukraine would, for instance, recognize, let's say, the Crimean Peninsula or parts of eastern Ukraine as Russian territory. Some of those were first annexed back in 2014.
But there have also been some pretty surprising recent statements out of Moscow, meanwhile, with President Putin saying on Russian state TV he'd always, quote, "looked positively on any peace initiatives," and he hoped Ukrainian leaders would do the same. The Kremlin's chief spokesperson said those comments from the Russian president indicated a willingness to reengage in direct talks with Ukraine about, at the very least, ending strikes on civilian targets.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So then what's the United States' role in all of this?
MARX: Well, you know, the absence of Secretary of State Rubio seems significant. Just last week in Paris, he'd said the Americans wanted discussions to move forward within days. Otherwise, there was a possibility the U.S. would move on. Steve Witkoff, the White House has said, will be traveling to Moscow, not to London, this week for a fourth face-to-face meeting with Putin. And meanwhile, President Zelenskyy said that none of the potential ideas the U.S. administration has been floating in the media have actually been formally shared with him or his team. And so it's kind of unclear whether the U.S. is trying to stand between these two warring parties, as a mediator might, or instead to sort of create a peace framework almost unilaterally that Russia and Ukraine would be asked to simply accept.
MARTÍNEZ: So if all that's unclear, then how clear are the chances of peace looking right now?
MARX: Well, pretty obscure, frankly. President Putin's called the unilateral temporary ceasefire - you might remember - on Saturday evening for the entirety of the Easter weekend. But Britain's defense secretary, John Healey, told Parliament here in London yesterday that British military intelligence indicated there'd be no letup whatsoever in those attacks over the Easter weekend. The Ukrainians cried foul and said there had been no ceasefire from Russia. It had simply been a Russian propaganda exercise.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's journalist Willem Marx in London. Thank you very much.
MARX: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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