Russia awaits Ukraine's response to proposed Istanbul talks
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday said it was still waiting for Ukraine to say whether it would attend peace talks in Istanbul on Monday after Kyiv demanded Moscow send its peace terms before agreeing to the meeting. Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year conflict have gained pace in recent months, but Moscow has shown no signs of easing its bombardment of Ukraine while rebuffing calls for an immediate ceasefire. Moscow has offered to hold a second round of direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, where it wants to present a so-called "memorandum" outlining its conditions for a long-term peace settlement. But Ukraine said the meeting would not yield results unless it saw a copy of the memorandum in advance, a proposal that the Kremlin dismissed.
"As far as I know, no response has been received yet... we need to wait for a response from the Ukrainian side," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, calling Kyiv's demand that Russia provide peace conditions up front as "non-constructive". Ukraine said it had already submitted its peace terms to Russia and demanded Moscow do the same.
Türkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Russia and Ukraine not to "shut the door" on dialogue ahead of the anticipated meeting in Istanbul. The warring sides previously met in Istanbul on May 16, their first direct talks in over three years. Those talks failed to yield a breakthrough, but the two sides did agree to trade 1,000 prisoners each -- their biggest POW swap since the beginning of the conflict. Erdogan's Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, was expected to travel to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for a peace deal, has become increasingly frustrated with Moscow's apparent stalling and warned on Wednesday he would determine within "about two weeks" whether Putin was serious about ending the fighting. Moscow's offensive, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukraine on Thursday criticised Russia's refusal to provide the memorandum. "The Russians' fear of sending their memorandum to Ukraine suggests that it is likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums," foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said. The Kremlin has been grinding forward on the battlefield for over a year while pushing its demands for peace, which include Ukraine abandoning its Nato ambitions and ceding territory it already controls.
Local authorities in Ukraine said on Thursday that Russia had fired 90 drones overnight, killing at least five people across the country. In southern Ukraine, a drone strike killed two civilians in the Kherson region, while a ballistic missile attack claimed the life of a farm worker in the Mykolaiv region. In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling killed one civilian, according to a 24-hour tally from the National Police. A 68-year-old man was killed by a drone strike on his home in the northeastern Sumy region, which borders Russia.
In his comments on Wednesday, Trump told reporters he was "very disappointed" at Russia's deadly bombardment during the negotiating process, but rebuffed calls to impose more sanctions on Moscow. Kyiv has accused Russia of deliberately stalling the peace process to pursue its offensive. Zelensky said Russia was "amassing" more than 50,000 troops on the front line around Sumy, where Moscow's army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a "buffer zone" inside Ukrainian territory.
On Thursday, the Russian army said it captured three villages in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions and had repelled 48 Ukrainian drones, including three over the Moscow region. A retired Russian commander who led air strikes on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol died in a blast early on Thursday in Stavropol in southern Russia, authorities said, adding that they did not rule out Ukrainian involvement. — AFP
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