Putin’s Ukraine peace talks with Trump are a KGB operation

  Donald Trump’s Ukraine negotiations are little more than a “KGB operation” that have not brought the country an inch closer to peace, Ukraine’s former prime minister has told The i Paper.

Trump’s White House has been brokering talks over ending Russia’s war in Ukraine since returning to the White House early last year, but they have so far failed to yield results.

Talks are stalling, with Russia demanding that Ukraine cede large swathes of land in the east in order to agree a ceasefire.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who served two terms as prime minister of Ukraine from 2014 to 2016, described the talks as a “sham”.

“I do not envisage this as talks,” he said, speaking to The i Paper at Munich Security Conference. “I call it sham talks, sham consultations. It’s a special KGB operation under the auspices of [Vladimir] Putin. It has nothing to do with any kind of real negotiations.”

The Russian President is a former officer in the KGB, the notorious secret police and intelligence service during the final decades of the Soviet Union whose officers were taught the art of influence and manipulation. Putin later became director of its successor organisation, the FSB.

Yatsenyuk said the talks had not moved Ukraine forward “an inch”, adding: “Even worse, these talks paved the way for Putin” by giving a platform for maximalist demands.

“The US President still believes that he can convince Putin. But there is only one way to convince Putin, which is to press like hell on him,” he said. “He understands only the language of strength. The rest he reads as a sign of weakness.”

Trump has suggested that Ukraine will need to cede territory to Russia in order to secure a peace deal, with a 28-point peace proposal drawn up at the end of last year demanding that Ukraine surrender parts of the east that Russia has been unable to take militarily.

Russia occupies around 20 per cent of Ukraine and has changed its constitution to lay claim to the land.

But Yatsenyuk said there was nothing that Ukraine could give to Russia that would secure a lasting peace.