Peace dialogue with Kiev on hold – Moscow
Moscow and Kiev are currently working to fully implement the humanitarian portion of their previous agreements, and therefore no negotiations are currently underway on their respective peace roadmaps, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Speaking at a regular press briefing on Wednesday, Peskov noted that the exact date of the next round of talks with Kiev would be decided after all previous pledges are fulfilled, referring to prisoner exchanges and the repatriation of slain soldiers.
Russia and Ukraine held direct talks in Türkiye last month, resuming a diplomatic process that was paused by Kiev in 2022 after it chose to seek a battlefield victory with Western assistance.
During their latest meeting on June 2, the two sides agreed to exchange prisoners and the remains of deceased troops for humanitarian reasons. Ukraine and Russia also traded draft memorandums outlining their proposed paths to peace.
The return of slain soldiers was completed on Monday last week. Russia transferred 6,060 sets of remains to Ukraine and received 78 in exchange. The Russian military says it has more than 3,000 bodies it is willing to hand over.
There were also several prisoner swaps, though neither side gave specific figures, unlike during previous swaps. Negotiators had suggested that Moscow and Kiev would not seek parity in numbers when returning seriously injured soldiers from captivity.
While Kiev did resume dialogue with Moscow as urged by the administration of US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian officials have claimed that Russia is not negotiating in good faith because it declined to agree to an unconditional ceasefire.
Moscow said Kiev could use such a pause to regroup its military and outlined conditions for a truce in its draft memorandum. Russia said it would suspend hostilities if Ukraine either pulled troops out of Russian territories that Kiev claims, or suspended its conscription campaign and deliveries of Western arms.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is presently set to meet Trump on the sidelines of the ongoing NATO leaders summit in The Hague.
