No new direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks are scheduled, Kremlin says

Russia and Ukraine haven’t any direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin stated on Thursday, practically every week after their first face-to-face session since shortly after Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and days after U.S. President Donald Trump stated they’d begin ceasefire negotiations “instantly.”

“There isn’t any concrete settlement concerning the subsequent conferences,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov instructed reporters. “They’re but to be agreed upon.”

Throughout two hours of talks in Istanbul on Could 16, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to alternate 1,000 prisoners of battle every, in what can be their greatest such swap. Other than that step, the assembly delivered no important breakthrough.

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A number of months of intensified U.S. and European stress on the 2 sides to just accept a ceasefire and negotiate a settlement have yielded little progress. In the meantime, Russia is readying a summer season offensive to seize extra Ukrainian land, Ukrainian authorities and navy analysts say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated earlier this week that Moscow would “suggest and is able to work with” Ukraine on a “memorandum” outlining the framework for “a doable future peace treaty.” Mr. Putin has successfully rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has accepted. He has linked the likelihood to a halt in Ukraine’s mobilisation effort and a freeze on Western arms shipments to Kyiv as a part of a complete settlement.

European leaders have accused Mr. Putin of dragging his toes in peace efforts whereas he tries to press his larger military’s battlefield initiative and seize extra Ukrainian land.

The foremost prisoner swap is a “fairly laborious course of” that “requires a while,” Mr. Peskov stated.

However he added, “The work is constant at a fast tempo, all people is serious about doing it rapidly.”

Mr. Peskov instructed Russia’s Interfax information company that Moscow had offered Kyiv with an inventory of prisoners it needs launched. “We’ve not but obtained a counter checklist from Kyiv. We’re ready,” he instructed Interfax.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Thursday that preparations are underway for the potential prisoner alternate, which he described as “maybe the one actual outcome” of the talks in Turkey.

Mr. Peskov disputed a report Thursday in The Wall Road Journal that Mr. Trump instructed European leaders after his telephone name with Mr. Putin on Monday that the Russian chief wasn’t serious about talks as a result of he thinks that Moscow is profitable.

“We all know what Mr. Trump instructed Mr. Putin, we don’t know what Mr. Trump instructed the Europeans. We all know President Trump’s official assertion,” Peskov stated. “What we all know contrasts with what was written within the article you talked about.”

Other than the persevering with battle of attrition alongside the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) entrance line, which has killed tens of 1000’s of troops on each side, Russia and Ukraine have been firing dozens of long-range drones at one another’s territory nearly each day.

Russia’s Protection Ministry stated it shot down 105 Ukrainian drones in a single day, together with 35 over the Moscow area. It was the second straight evening that Kyiv’s forces have focused the Russian capital.

Greater than 160 flights have been delayed at three of Moscow’s 4 important airports, the town’s transport prosecutor stated, as officers grounded planes citing issues for passenger security.

The assault prompted some areas to show off cellular web indicators, together with the Oryol area southwest of Moscow, which was focused closely Wednesday.

The Protection Ministry claimed it downed 485 Ukrainian drones over a number of areas and the Black Sea between late Tuesday and early Thursday, together with 63 over the Moscow area, in one of many greatest drone assaults.

It was not doable to confirm the numbers.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian air power stated Russia launched 128 drones in a single day. Among the many targets have been Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk area, damaging an industrial facility, energy traces, and a number of other non-public houses, regional Gov. Serhii Lysak stated on Telegram.

In Kyiv, particles from a Russian drone fell onto the grounds of a college within the capital’s Darnytskyi district, in line with Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv Metropolis Navy Administration. No accidents have been reported.

Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Kursk area killed a 50-year-old man and injured two others, performing regional Gov. Alexander Khinshtein stated Thursday.

Mr. Putin visited the Kursk area on Tuesday for the primary time since Moscow claimed that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the realm final month. Kyiv officers denied the declare.

“Regardless of the liberation of our territory, the border area continues to be topic to enemy assaults,” Khinshtein warned residents on Telegram. “It’s nonetheless harmful to be there.”

Mr. Putin has stated Russian forces have orders to create a “safety buffer zone” alongside the border.

That may assist forestall Ukraine from putting areas inside Russia with artillery, Mr. Putin instructed a authorities assembly, however he gave no particulars of the place the proposed buffer zone can be or how far it might stretch.

Mr. Putin stated a 12 months in the past {that a} Russian offensive on the time aimed to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv area. That might have helped shield Russia’s Belgorod border area, the place frequent Ukrainian assaults have embarrassed the Kremlin.