No new direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks scheduled, Kremlin says
Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin said on Thursday.
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The Kremlin has revealed that Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled.
The announcement comes nearly a week after the countries’ first face-to-face session since Moscow’s invasion in 2022, and days after President Donald Trump said they would start ceasefire negotiations “immediately”.
“There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “They are yet to be agreed upon.”
During two hours of talks in Istanbul on 16 May, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each - the biggest swap of its kind so far.
Apart from that step, the meeting delivered no significant breakthrough.
The two sides are yet to make significant progress in ceasefire talks, despite significant pressure from the US and Europe.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government and military analysts have said Russia is readying a summer offensive to capture more Ukrainian land.
Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would “propose and is ready to work with” Ukraine on a “memorandum” outlining the framework for “a possible future peace treaty.”
Putin has effectively rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has accepted.
Instead, Putin is setting conditions for any such ceasefire to include Ukraine halting its mobilisation efforts, and Western countries cutting off military aid to Kyiv.
However, despite the major prisoner swap being a “laborious process” that “requires some time”, Peskov said “work is continuing at a quick pace, everybody is interested in doing it quickly”.
Peskov told Russia’s Interfax news agency that Moscow had provided Kyiv with a list of prisoners it wants released.
“We have not yet received a counter list from Kyiv. We are waiting,” he told Interfax.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed on Thursday that preparations are underway for the potential prisoner exchange, which he described as “perhaps the only real result” of the talks in Turkey.
Peskov also disputed a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday that said Trump told European leaders that Putin wasn't interested in talks because he thinks Moscow is winning, following his phone call with the Russian leader.
Russia and Ukraine have continued to fire long-range drones at each other almost daily, with Russia’s Defense Ministry claiming it shot down 105 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 35 over the Moscow region.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 128 drones overnight.