Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reiterated his country’s position that it would not engage in any peace talks unless Russia withdraws from all Ukrainian territory.

The Kremlin wants Kyiv to acknowledge Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, which Moscow took over in 2014, and to also recognize September’s annexation of the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine has rejected those demands and insists it won’t hold talks with Russia until Moscow’s troops pull back from all occupied territories.

In Iraq, Kuleba met with his Iraqi counterpart, Fuad Hussein. It was the first visit by a Ukrainian official to Baghdad since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the first visit by a Ukrainian foreign minister in 11 years.

Hussein pointed to Iraq’s years of experience with war and conflict, as well as with hosting negotiations between hostile parties — such as the recent Saudi-Iran talks.

Baghdad had hosted several rounds of the talks between Riyadh and Tehran before the negotiations broke down. They later resumed with China as mediator, resulting in last month’s announcement that the two regional rivals would restore diplomatic relations.

Baghdad “has experience in communication with countries that have tension between them” and “is ready to be in service of peace,” Hussein said in a press conference Monday. “The continuation of the war will be dangerous not only to the two countries but to the world.”

Iraq, like much of the Middle East, historically relies heavily on grain imported from Ukraine, and consumers have suffered from rising food prices since the beginning of the war.

Kuleba said that while Ukraine sees “Iraq as a country that is capable of building bridges… Russia is on the offensive … and this is the biggest hurdle on the way to peace.”

“We need Russia to agree with a very simple fact that it has to stop the war and withdraw,” Kuleba added.

The current Iraqi government is seen as close to Iran, which the U.S. has accused of supplying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but says it was before the war.

Iraq also maintains close ties with the United States, which has a strong influence over its financial sector. Iraq’s foreign currency reserves have been housed at the U.S. Federal Reserve since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

While rejecting Baghdad’s offer of mediation, Kuleba said Ukraine hopes to strengthen ties with Iraq and that his visit Monday was part of an effort to “reinvent Ukrainian-Iraqi relations.”

Sewell reported from Beirut.

The Fatah Coalition said it holds the United States fully responsible for the alleged Israeli aggression, “which we consider to be a declaration of war on Iraq and its people.” The coalition is a parliament bloc representing Iran-backed paramilitary militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The coalition’s statement came a day after a drone strike in the western Iraqi town of Qaim killed a commander with the forces — the latest in strikes apparently conducted by Israel against the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. It added that U.S. troops are no longer needed in Iraq.

The Shiite militiamen, meanwhile, held a funeral procession in Baghdad for the commander killed Sunday.

“There is no greater God but God!” the mourners shouted as they marched behind a banner with the words “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” Some trampled on an American flag as they marched.

The U.S. Defense Department issued a statement Monday denying responsibility for the recent attacks and promising to cooperate with Iraqi investigations.

“We support Iraqi sovereignty and have repeatedly spoken out against any potential actions by external actors inciting violence in Iraq, ” Pentagon spokesman Jonathan R. Hoffman said. “The government of Iraq has the right to control their own internal security and protect their democracy.”

Anger is mounting in Iraq following a spate of mysterious airstrikes that have targeted military bases and a weapons depot belonging to Iran-backed militias. The drone attacks have not been claimed by any side but U.S. officials have said Israel was behind at least one of the attacks.

The Shiite militias have blamed the attacks on Israel but hold its ally the United States ultimately responsible. The attacks are threatening to destabilize security in Iraq, which has struggled to remain neutral in the conflict between Washington and Tehran.

“These strikes won’t break us, they’ll make us stronger,” the militias’ Lt. Gen. Hussein Abed Muttar told The Associated Press at the funeral.

Along with the commander, another member of the Shiite militia was also killed in the drone attack on Sunday evening near the Qaim border crossing with Syria. The attack targeted vehicles belonging to the Hezbollah Brigades faction, also known as Brigade 45, which operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned Shiite militias.

U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, but returned in 2014 at the invitation of the government to help battle the Islamic State group after it seized vast areas in the north and west of the country, including Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. A U.S.-led coalition provided crucial air support as Iraqi forces regrouped and, together with the PMF, drove IS out in a costly three-year campaign.

The U.S. maintains about 5,000 troops in Iraq, and some groups say there’s no longer a justification for them to be there now that IS has been defeated.

“While we reserve the right to respond to these Zionist attacks, we hold the international coalition, particularly the United States, fully responsible for this aggression which we consider a declaration of war on Iraq and its people,” the statement by the Fatah Coalition said.

Iraqi President Barham Saleh hosted a meeting Monday that included the prime minister and parliament speaker as well as PMF militia leaders to discuss the recent attacks.

A statement issued after the meeting avoided blaming the drone attacks on any specific country, but described it as a “blatant act of aggression” aimed at dragging the PMF away from its ongoing role of eradicating remnants of the Islamic State group.

Absent from the meeting were the leaders of two of the most powerful factions strongly allied to Iran, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qais al-Khazali. An official who attended the meeting said they were in Iran.

American and Iraqi air force commanders say the coalition will launch fewer airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces and instead focus more on training Iraqi airmen. Iraq’s air force will assume more of the “missions, duties and responsibilities” to maintain the country’s hard-fought victories over ISIS, according to a statement released by U.S. Air Forces Central Command.

However, Iraq is struggling to fund the Air Force’s $1 billion budget as the country is faced with the enormous task of rebuilding in the wake of its military victories. At a conference in Kuwait this week, Iraq asked the international community for $88.2 billion dollars to fund post-ISIS reconstruction, but was only able to raise a portion of that.

“Training a fighter pilot takes years,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Andrew Croft at a meeting with the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, Gen. Anwar Hama Ameen. “So this is not a short term investment, this is something for the long-term.”

Up until now the U.S. Air Force had largely been supporting Iraq’s security forces by launching airstrikes against ISIS targets and supporting the country’s F-16 program. Currently, Iraqi F-16 pilots are trained in the U.S. and the maintenance and security of Iraq’s F-16s is largely carried out by American contractors.

The announcement from the Air Force follows the announcement of a “shift in focus” from the U.S.-led coalition earlier this month after the Iraqi government said the U.S. had begun to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq. The U.S. is reducing the number of its troops in Iraq, but Iraqi and coalition officials say an agreement on the size of the force that will remain in the country has not yet been reached.

The coalition will now focus on “policing, border control and military capacity building,” Brig. Gen. Jonathan Braga said in a written statement last week.

“We will sustain the successful momentum and enhance the capacities of the Iraqi Security Forces in pursuing Daesh, now and in the future,” he added, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.

Coalition airstrikes proved to be decisive early on in the fight against ISIS and fueled Iraqi military victories throughout the more than three-year-long-campaign.

Before the U.S. began a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS in August 2014, the extremists could easily travel across the vast swaths of territory — much of it open desert — under their control in Iraq and neighboring Syria. Just weeks after overrunning Mosul, ISIS fighters launched a push on the city of Irbil in Iraq’s Kurdish region that was largely repelled by coalition air power.

In the months that followed, the extremists’ territorial gains were largely halted and over the next three years Iraqi ground forces with close coalition air support pushed ISIS out of towns, villages and cities across the country. In December 2017 Iraq’s prime minister declared victory over the group.

Croft said a well trained and equipped Iraqi Air Force could have prevented the fall of Mosul.

“If Iraq had a couple of airplanes and a couple of controllers, that would never have happened,” he said, referring to ISIS’ blitz across Iraq in the summer of 2014.

However, maintaining a modern air force has been prohibitively expensive for Iraq. Last month, contracting firm Sallyport Global Holdings was awarded a $400 million contract for base operations and security for Iraq’s F-16 program by the U.S. Air Force.

By training Iraqis to maintain and secure their own equipment, Iraqi air force commander Ameen said he hopes to bring down costs. “The big challenge for us right now is the budget,” he said.

Iraq continues to struggle with a budget crisis sparked by a downturn in global oil prices and years of mismanagement of natural resource revenues. The enormous cost of rebuilding thousands of homes and swaths of infrastructure destroyed in the fight against ISIS is compounding Iraq’s economies woes.

“My ambition is to make the Iraqi Air Force a strong one to defend our country and its sovereignty,” Ameen said. “Not to fight against neighboring countries but to engage with them in military exercises.”