Qatar’s foreign minister meets Ukrainian officials in Doha, pledging support for peace efforts in the Russia-Ukraine war and highlighting Doha’s role in reuniting children with their families.
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, renewed his country’s support for peace efforts between Russia and Ukraine during a meeting with top Ukrainian officials in Doha on Tuesday.
The Ukrainian officials at the meeting included the Head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak, and the National Security and Defence Council Secretary, Rustem Umerov.
Both officials expressed their appreciation for Qatar’s support for Ukraine and its efforts in reuniting Ukrainian children with their families, according to a statement by the Gulf state’s foreign ministry.
“They also discussed the latest developments of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and ways to resolve it peacefully, in addition to a number of issues of common interest,” the statement said.
Yermak, in a post on X, said the discussions also dealt with “shared interests in the field of security and defence” and ways to boost Doha and Kyiv’s relations.
Qatar has been playing a central role in mediating the return of children separated by the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which has raged on since 2022.
The Gulf state carried out the first such reunification on October 16, 2023, when four Ukrainian children were repatriated from Russia.
Qatar announced the latest reunification last week, when it reunited four children with their relatives in Ukraine while returning three others to their families in Russia. The latest reunification brought up the total number of children it repatriated to 107.
Last year, under a separate initiative, Qatar hosted a meeting with a Ukrainian delegation, which resulted in agreements to restore personal documents and the exchange of lists of missing military personnel.
Other major outcomes included facilitating the exchange of letters from prisoners of war.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has only intensified despite efforts led by the United States under the Donald Trump administration to reach a ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Trump said he was prepared to impose economic sanctions against Russia if its president, Vladimir Putin, did not agree to a peace deal. Trump’s remarks came days after he met Putin in Alaska on August 15 in a push for an agreement.
“We want to have an end. We have economic sanctions. I’m talking about economic because we’re not going to get into a world war,” he told reporters.
