Three-way negotiations with Ukraine and the United States on ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War II could take place in October, the Kremlin said on Sunday, according to Russian media.
“We do not rule out such a possibility; we are talking about the foreseeable future,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, cited by Russia’s RIA and TASS news agencies.
Washington is seeking to kick-start long-stalled efforts, hoping to end the more than four-year-long war, with US negotiators visiting Kyiv and Moscow and US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin holding talks over the phone.
Several previous rounds of negotiations have failed, while US-led efforts stalled with Trump’s attention diverted to the ongoing US-Israeli war in the Middle East with Iran.
In an interview released on Saturday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that he would be willing to meet Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December for talks.
But Peskov immediately ruled it out as “impossible” in New Delhi on Saturday, repeating Moscow’s demand that a meeting could only take place in the Russian capital.
Putin has repeatedly rejected offers for a face-to-face sit-down with Zelensky aimed at brokering an end to the conflict, which has killed thousands of people and crippled both countries’ economies.
Both Moscow and Kyiv have escalated long-range strikes on each other in recent months, leading to the highest civilian death toll since the early days of the war.
Previous rounds of talks have foundered, with Moscow so far unwilling to drop its maximalist conditions to end the fighting, including a demand that Ukraine cede territory in the east that Russia’s troops have not captured.
On Sunday, Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov told journalists, including from AFP, that there is so far no “coordinated package” on which negotiations could be based. “At present, there is the idea that we need to reach an agreement on the territorial issue. But there are also many other questions,” he added. (AFP)
