The United States and Russia have been holding peace talks on Ukraine for months | Ukraine and Russia war

The talks revolved around the prospects of laying a foundation for peace negotiations, according to multiple sources from NBC News. For example, Lavrov reportedly spent hours talking to the group about Ukraine when he visited the United Nations in New York in April. The US government was aware of the activities of the unofficial “talk group” but did not direct them, according to NBC.

One difficult topic has been what to do with Ukrainian lands that have fallen into the hands of pro-Russian Ukrainians or the Russian armed forces since 2014. In the eastern Donbass region, many people have wanted nothing to do with the pro-Western central government in Kiev since 2014. Crimea, the vast majority of ethnic Russians.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky says he doesn’t want to negotiate until all Ukrainian territory is restored from early 2014. But according to NBC, there are more and more policymakers and military personnel in Washington who don’t see it as realistic. They believe that there are Ukrainian lands that Zelensky cannot reclaim. They are hoping for negotiations after Zelensky’s counterattack, which hasn’t yielded much yet. There should be a cease-fire and a demilitarized zone.

The discussion group’s members are said to include former diplomat Richard Haass, who directed the Council on Foreign Relations think tank from 2003 to this month. Two other leaders of the think tank are also said to belong to clandestine support groups. They previously worked at the White House and State Department. Their main intention was to keep communication open with the Russian government, according to NBC sources. The three individuals named by the think tank declined to comment.

The news channel does not know how many times these informal conversations took place. In one case, at least one member of the group is said to have gone to Moscow for talks with Russian leaders of think tanks or research institutes, among others. NBC sources declined to name any Russians for security reasons. There was no comment from the White House and the Russian Embassy in Washington.

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There was also contact between Russia and the United States regarding the Wagner Rebellion. CIA Director William Burns called Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR intelligence service, about this last week. This was reported by the “New York Times” and “The Wall Street Journal”. During the conversation, Burns allegedly assured the Kremlin that the United States played no role in the short-lived insurgency.

This is the highest contact between the United States and Russia since the uprising. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, rebelled at Russia’s defense summit a week ago. Prigozhin’s mercenary army, Wagner’s group, was moving towards Moscow. The rebellion was halted after mediation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Wagner’s boss has not been prosecuted and has since fled to Belarus.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after the mutiny that his country was investigating whether Western authorities had anything to do with it. US President Joe Biden already stressed on Monday that the US and its allies were not involved.

According to The Washington Post, Burns recently traveled to Ukraine for a secret meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is not known exactly when the visit took place, but it would have taken place before the Wagner Rebellion.