News

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine are set to meet for another round of peace talks in Geneva, as United States President Donald Trump pushes for an end to Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.

The two-day talks, which begin on Tuesday, are likely to focus on the issue of territory and come just days before the fourth anniversary, on February 24, of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Trump is pressing Moscow and Kyiv to reach a deal soon, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has complained that his country is facing the greatest pressure from Washington to make concessions.

Russia ⁠is demanding that Kyiv cede the remaining 20 percent of the eastern region of Donetsk that Moscow has failed to capture – something Kyiv refuses to do.

Trump again increased the pressure on Ukraine late on Monday.

When asked about the talks on board Air Force One, he described the negotiations as “big” and said, “Ukraine better come to the table, fast.” He did not elaborate further, saying, “That’s all I am telling you.”

The talks, which the Kremlin said will be held behind closed doors and with no media present, come after two earlier rounds held this year in Abu Dhabi. Those talks did not yield a breakthrough.

“This time, the idea is to discuss a broader range of issues, including, in fact, the main ones,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. “The main issues concern both the territories and everything else related to the demands we have put forward,” he said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, said Russia was unwilling to compromise and wants to keep fighting.

“Even on the eve of the trilateral meetings in Geneva, the Russian army has no orders other than to continue striking Ukraine. This speaks volumes about how Russia regards the partners’ diplomatic efforts,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Monday.

“Only with sufficient pressure on Russia and clear security guarantees for Ukraine can this war realistically be brought to an end,” he added.

‘Serious’ intentions

The Russia-Ukraine war has spiralled into Europe’s deadliest conflict since 1945, with tens of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their homes and many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages devastated by the fighting.

Russia occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. It wants Ukrainian troops to withdraw from swaths of heavily fortified and strategic territory as part of any peace deal. Kyiv has rejected the demand, which would be politically and militarily fraught, and has instead demanded robust security guarantees from the West.

The Kremlin said the Russian delegation would be led by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin.

However, the fact that Ukrainian negotiators have accused Medinsky in the past of lecturing them about history as an excuse for Russia’s invasion ⁠has further lowered expectations for any significant breakthrough in Geneva.

Military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov will also take part in the talks, while Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev will be part of a separate ⁠working group on economic issues.

Vladmir Sotnikov, a political scientist based in Moscow, said the Russian team will consist of about 20 people, many more than delegations in previous rounds of talks.

“I think the Russian intentions are serious. Because you know, the situation here in Russia is that ordinary people are just tired of this war,” he told Al Jazeera.

Kyiv’s delegation will be led by Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov. Senior presidential aide Serhiy Kyslytsya will ‌also be present.

Before the delegation left for Geneva, Umerov said Ukraine’s goal of “a sustainable and lasting peace” remained unchanged.

As well as land, Russia and Ukraine also remain far apart on issues such as who should control the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the ‌possible ‌role of Western troops in post-war Ukraine.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will represent the Trump administration at the talks, according to the Reuters news agency. They are also attending talks in Geneva this week with Iran.

The United States-imposed fuel crisis in Cuba is also turning into a waste and health crisis, as many collection trucks have been left with empty fuel tanks, causing refuse to pile up on the streets of the capital, Havana, and other cities and towns.

Only 44 of Havana’s 106 rubbish trucks have been able to keep operating due to the fuel shortages, slowing rubbish collection, as waste piles up on Havana’s street corners, the Reuters news agency reported on Monday, citing state-run news outlet Cubadebate.

Other towns are also seeing rubbish pile up, and residents have taken to social media to raise the alarm over the risk to public health, according to Reuters, citing Cuban media.

“It’s all over the city,” said Jose Ramon Cruz, a resident of Havana.

“It’s been ‌more than 10 days since a garbage truck came,” Cruz told Reuters.

The mounting rubbish crisis has added to the suffering on the tiny island-state, which US President Donald Trump described on Monday as a “failed nation”.

“Cuba is now a failed nation. They don’t even have jet fuels to get their aeroplanes to take off, they’re plugging up their runway,” Trump said.

“We’re talking to Cuba right now, and Marco Rubio is talking to Cuba right now, and they should absolutely make a deal. Because it’s really a humanitarian threat,” he said.

Cuba’s severe fuel crisis is a result of the US cutting off crucial oil supplies once imported from Venezuela. Washington’s move followed the bloody US military raid on Caracas and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in early January.

US ‘violations of peace, security and international law’

Trump has been threatening Cuba and its leadership for months, and increased his choke-hold on the Cuban economy by recently passing an executive order that allows the US to impose crippling sanctions on any country that supplies oil to Cuba.

Asked if the US intended to remove the Cuban government, akin to Washington’s abduction of Maduro in Venezuela, Trump said: “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

Last month, Trump warned Cuban leaders to “make a deal, before it is too late”, without specifying the consequences of not meeting his demand.

Amid the crisis, Mexico sent two navy ships carrying 800 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Cuba last week, and on Monday, Spain said it would use the Spanish Agency for International Development and the United Nations to channel aid to Havana.

The announcement was made as Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Manuel Albares met with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, in Madrid on Monday, where the pair “addressed the current situation in Cuba following the tightening of the embargo”.

In a post on X, Rodriguez criticised “the violations of peace, security and international law and the increasing hostility of the United States against Cuba”.

The Cuban foreign minister’s stop in Madrid followed visits to China and Vietnam, where he has sought support amid the US’s de facto blockade.

A regional train has derailed in southern Switzerland, injuring five people, police said, as the risk of avalanches in the region has reached its second-highest level.

The accident on Monday near the town of Goppenstein occurred amid heavy snow and at an altitude of 1,216 metres (4,000 feet), according to the AFP news agency.

“According to initial findings, an avalanche may have crossed the tracks shortly before the train passed,” police said, adding that the public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.

“Five people were injured. One of them was taken to hospital,” police added.

The train accident follows a series of deadly avalanches across the Alps in recent days involving skiers.

On Friday, three skiers were killed after being swept away by an avalanche in the upmarket French Alpine resort of Val d’Isere.

Cedric Bonnevie, who oversees the resort’s pistes, said one of the victims was a French national while the others were foreign citizens.

He said one victim appeared to have been caught in the avalanche high on the mountain slope, while the other two were part of a group of five, including a professional guide, lower on the mountain face and did not see the avalanche approaching.

In Italy, rescuers said last week that a record 13 backcountry skiers, climbers and hikers had died in the mountains over the previous seven days, including 10 in avalanches triggered by an exceptionally unstable snowpack.

Fresh snowfall during recent storms, combined with windswept snow sitting on weak internal layers, has created especially dangerous conditions across the Alpine arc bordering France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, Italy’s Alpine Rescue said.

“Under such conditions, the passage of a single skier, or natural overloading from the weight of snow, can be sufficient to trigger an avalanche,” Federico Catania, Alpine Rescue’s spokesperson, said.

The avalanche deaths have occurred on ungroomed mountain slopes, away from the well-maintained and monitored Winter Olympic sites in Lombardy near the Swiss border, Cortina d’Ampezzo in Veneto, and the cross-country skiing venues in Val di Fiemme, within the autonomous province of Trentino.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that his government will not repatriate Australian women and children from Syria who have been identified as relatives of suspected ISIL (ISIS) fighters.

“We have a very firm view that we won’t be providing assistance or repatriation,” Albanese told ABC News on Tuesday.

Albanese said that while it is “unfortunate” that children have been affected, Australia is “not providing any support”.

“As my mother would say, you make your bed, you lie in it,” he said.

“We have no sympathy, frankly, for people who travelled overseas in order to participate in what was an attempt to establish a caliphate to undermine and destroy our way of life,” he added.

A spokesperson for Australian Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke also warned that those who return to Australia from Syria will face the law if they have committed crimes.

“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia, they will be met with the full force of the law,” the spokesperson said, according to the Reuters news agency.

A total of 34 women and children holding Australian citizenship were released on Monday from the Kurdish-controlled Roj detention camp in northern Syria.

The Australians, who are said to be relatives of ISIL fighters, were later returned to the camp due to what was described as “technical reasons”, the Reuters and AFP news agencies reported.

Roj detention camp director Hakmiyeh Ibrahim told Al Jazeera that the women and children from 11 families were handed over to relatives “who have come from Australia to collect them”.

The women and children were seen boarding minibuses to reach the Syrian capital, Damascus, from where they were to depart for Australia.

But halfway through the trip, Kurdish escorts were ordered to turn back, as the group did not have permission “to enter government-held territory”, according to Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett, who is reporting from Aleppo.

Rashid Omar, an official at the Roj camp, later confirmed to AFP that the Australian nationals were forced to return to the detention facility. He said that representatives of the families were still working to resolve the issue with Syrian authorities.

‘Concern in the Australian population’

The humanitarian organisation Save the Children Australia filed a lawsuit in 2023 on behalf of 11 women and 20 children, seeking their repatriation, citing Australia’s “moral and legal responsibility” to its citizens. The Federal Court ruled against Save the Children, saying the Australian government did not control their detention in Syria.

A 17-year-old Australian boy died while under detention in Syria in 2022.

Rodger Shanahan, a Middle East security analyst, told Al Jazeera that the Australian government is facing more resistance to the return of its citizens from Syria following the deadly Bondi Beach attack in December, in which 15 people were killed, at a Jewish festival in Sydney.

“I think that there’s a concern in the Australian population that people might appear to have done away with their radical views, but they still retain them deep down,” Shanahan said.

While Kurdish-led forces still control the Roj camp, they withdrew from the larger al-Hol camp in January, when Syria’s central government’s security forces took control of the area.

At one point, the al-Hol camp housed some 24,000 people, mostly Syrians, but also Iraqis, and more than 6,000 women and children with foreign nationalities.

Governments around the world have been resisting the repatriation of their citizens from the camps in Syria.

The Roj camp also housed United Kingdom-born Shamima Begum, who was 15 when she and two other girls travelled from London in 2015 to marry ISIL fighters in Syria. In 2019, the UK government revoked Begum’s citizenship soon after she was discovered in a detention camp in Syria.

Since then, Begum has challenged the decision, which was turned down by an appeals court in February 2024.

United States President Donald Trump has said that he will be involved “indirectly” in the second round of the high-stakes nuclear talks between Iran and Washington in Geneva.

Trump’s comments on Monday came as Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi travelled to the Swiss city for meetings ahead of the indirect talks with the US.

Tensions in the Gulf region remain high ahead of the crucial negotiations, with the US deploying a second aircraft carrier to the region and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei warning that any attack on Iran would prompt a regional war.

Trump told reporters on board Air Force One that the discussions on Tuesday were significant.

“I’ll be involved in those talks, indirectly. And they’ll be very important,” he said. “Iran is a very tough negotiator.”

Asked about the prospects for a deal, Trump said Iran had learned the consequences of its tough approach last June, when the US joined in Israel’s 12-day war on Iran and bombed three of its nuclear sites.

The attacks came amid indirect talks between Iran and the US on Tehran’s nuclear programme and resulted in their derailment.

However, Trump suggested Tehran was motivated to negotiate this time. “I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal,” he said.

Despite the US president’s comments about Iran seeking an agreement, the talks face major potential stumbling blocks. Washington has demanded that Tehran forgo uranium enrichment on its soil and has sought to expand the scope of talks to non-nuclear issues, such as Iran’s missile stockpile.

But Tehran, which insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, has said it is only willing to discuss curbs on its programme in exchange for sanctions relief. It has said it will not accept zero uranium ‌enrichment and that its missile capabilities are off the table.

‘Fair and equitable deal’

Araghchi, who arrived in Geneva earlier on Monday, said he was in the city “with real ideas to achieve a fair and equitable deal”. He added, in a post on X, “What is not on the table: submission before threats.”

The Iranian diplomat also met with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, in Geneva for a round of technical discussions. Tehran had suspended cooperation with the United Nations watchdog body after the US and Israel’s attacks on its nuclear sites.

The IAEA has been calling on Iran for months to say what happened to its stockpile of 440kg (970 pounds) of highly-enriched uranium following the Israeli-US strikes and to let inspections fully resume, including in three key sites that were bombed: Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan.

Tehran has allowed IAEA some access to the sites that were not damaged, but has not allowed inspectors to visit other sites, citing a potential risk of radiation.

Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar, reporting from Tehran, said there was “optimism” in the Iranian capital ahead of the talks.

“Officials here say the Iranian delegation in Geneva includes fully authorised economic, legal, political and technical teams. This signals that the Iranian side is ready for some serious concessions, particularly regarding its nuclear programme,” he said.

But Serdar noted that the talks come in the face of a massive US military build-up in the region, which continues to grow. The Iranians, too, he said, were not “stepping back”, with the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launching military drills in the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf on Monday.

Iran has ⁠repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital international waterway and oil export route from Gulf Arab states, in retaliation against any attack. The move would choke a fifth of global oil flows and send crude prices sharply higher.

Iran has also threatened to strike US military bases in the region in the event of an attack, promoting concerns of a wider war.

“This military escalation is going on in parallel with the diplomatic engagement. The regional countries are also stepping up diplomacy, because they have their concerns and they have their own fears,” Serdar said.