Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Ukraine accusing Russia of stalling negotiations, the impeachment of Peruvian President José Jerí, and bold first moves by Japan’s parliamentary supermajority.
No Breakthroughs
The second day of U.S.-brokered Russia-Ukraine peace talks ended abruptly on Wednesday after Kyiv accused Moscow of stalling negotiations. “We can state that Russia is trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, calling the first day of meetings in Geneva “difficult.”
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at Ukraine accusing Russia of stalling negotiations, the impeachment of Peruvian President José Jerí, and bold first moves by Japan’s parliamentary supermajority.
No Breakthroughs
The second day of U.S.-brokered Russia-Ukraine peace talks ended abruptly on Wednesday after Kyiv accused Moscow of stalling negotiations. “We can state that Russia is trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X, calling the first day of meetings in Geneva “difficult.”
Although both sides agreed to meet again, their failure to provide a date to do so makes it unlikely that significant progress will be made to end the conflict before it marks its four-year anniversary next Tuesday.
This was the third round of trilateral peace talks and the first in the Swiss city; two previous meetings in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, this year also failed to make a breakthrough. “This is complex work that requires alignment among all parties and sufficient time,” lead Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov said on Wednesday after talks in Geneva concluded roughly two hours in. Chief Russian delegate Vladimir Medinsky also described the conversations as “difficult, but business-like.”
According to one Ukrainian source who spoke to the BBC, some progress was made on “military issues”—namely, the location of the front line and questions concerning cease-fire monitoring. But the bulk of this week’s negotiations largely centered on territorial control, with both sides accusing the other of demanding nonstarters.
Moscow seeks the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, including land that Russian forces do not control. Currently, Russian troops occupy roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which they seized in 2014. However, since early 2024, Moscow has only advanced around 1.5 percent into Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Kyiv wants a deal that would freeze the conflict along present battlelines. On Tuesday, Zelensky told Axios that the Ukrainian people would not vote for a referendum that includes massive land concessions. “Emotionally, people will never forgive this. Never,” the Ukrainian president said. “They will not forgive … me. They will not forgive [the United States].”
Zelensky is also demanding that Kyiv and Washington jointly operate the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected all demands to relinquish its control.
If Ukraine hopes to find a consistent ally in the United States to counter Russia’s ambitions, then Kyiv may be out of luck. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vacillated between criticizing Moscow and placing the onus of progress on Kyiv. Right now, his attention appears to be on the latter.
“Ukraine better come to the table fast,” Trump told reporters on Monday, even as Russian forces continue to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and key members of Trump’s own Republican Party blame Putin for the war’s continuation.
Zelensky on Tuesday described Trump’s apparent double standards as “not fair,” adding that “I hope it is just his tactics and not the decision.”
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Another impeachment. Peru’s Congress voted on Tuesday to impeach President José Jerí, making him the sixth Peruvian leader in the past 10 years to leave office before their term expired. Legislators planned to select a new leader on Wednesday who will hold power until general elections can be held on April 12. The winner of that vote will assume the presidency on July 28.
Lawmakers passed seven motions of impeachment on Tuesday, citing Jerí’s failure to disclose meetings with Chinese businessmen who were under government scrutiny. Under Peruvian law, presidents must log all official business. During questioning last month, Jerí verified the authenticity of three videos that showed him entering a restaurant in Lima owned by wealthy Chinese businessman Yang Zhihua, but he refused to disclose his phone records, arguing that he was friends with Yang before becoming president.
Political instability has long been a hallmark of modern Peruvian politics. With Jerí’s ouster, though, it is unclear who voters will elect to the role. Two conservative politicians are currently neck and neck in opinion polls: former Lima Mayor Rafael López Aliaga and former Peruvian first lady Keiko Fujimori.
First steps toward reform. Sanae Takaichi was reappointed as Japan’s prime minister on Wednesday after her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) secured a rare supermajority in snap parliamentary elections this month. With the LDP now holding 316 out of 465 seats in Japan’s lower house, Takaichi has a sweeping mandate to enact ambitious defense and economic reforms, including expediting the passage of the annual budget, without needing to negotiate with other parties.
First on the agenda appears to be Japanese trade with the United States. Late Tuesday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that Tokyo plans to invest $36 billion in three U.S. projects: a natural gas plant, a crude oil export facility, and a synthetic diamond manufacturing site. This is part of a trade deal agreed to in July, under which Japan vowed to invest $550 billion in U.S.-based projects. Japanese Trade Minister Ryosei Akazawa said on Wednesday that the three projects would “promote the economic and national security interests” of both nations.
Also on Wednesday, Takaichi confirmed that the LDP will accelerate discussions to suspend a sales tax on food—without issuing fresh debt. The prime minister hopes the measure will revitalize Japan’s economy, which carries the heaviest public debt burden among high-income countries. However, that same day, the International Monetary Fund warned Tokyo against the move, citing estimates that borrowing costs on public debt are set to double.
Bomb threat. The hard-left France Unbowed party evacuated its Paris headquarters on Wednesday following a “bomb threat,” party coordinator Manuel Bompard announced, adding that police were on site to investigate the incident.
The reported threat comes just hours after the party was accused by far-right lawmakers of having some responsibility for the killing of Quentin Deranque, a 23-year-old far-right activist who was beaten to death last week while on the sidelines of a protest against a university conference in Lyon, where France Unbowed lawmaker Rima Hassan was speaking. According to Lyon prosecutor Thierry Dran, Deranque was “thrown to the ground and beaten by at least six individuals.” French authorities have already detained 11 people for questioning, including one France Unbowed parliamentary aide.
France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has denied any party involvement in the killing. Although he said that the party is “facing the most grotesque and most dangerous accusations against us,” he called on “everyone to remain calm and composed. No escalation. Observe, learn, reflect.” New polling on Tuesday showed the far-right National Rally party on track to win a mayoral race in Nice next month, in what analysts are saying is an early indicator of how the party will perform in France’s 2027 presidential election.
Odds and Ends
Meet Orion, a robotic dog that India’s Galgotias University presented as its own creation at this week’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. After its unveiling, though, social media users identified Orion as actually a Unitree Go2, a Chinese-made product commercially available for roughly $2,800—reportedly prompting conference staff on Wednesday to order the university to vacate its stall. “This robot has turned the Modi government into a global laughingstock,” the opposition Indian National Congress party posted on X. Galgotias maintains that it never claimed to have developed the robot itself.
