Russia on Thursday said that it has sent an invitation for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to come to Moscow for peace talks. The development came as the US-led efforts intensified to reach a deal to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s statement came hours after it declined to comment on rumours that Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to stop striking each other’s energy infrastructure.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, cited by the Interfax news agency, said on Thursday that Moscow had not yet received a response to its invitation for Zelenskyy to come to Moscow.
Notably, Zelenskyy last year rejected a similar invitation. However, he rejected the invitation saying he could not to go to the capital of a nation that was firing
missiles at his country every day. He suggested at the time that Putin come to Kyiv instead.
Last weekend, Washington-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi renewed efforts to clinch a peace deal, but differences persisted between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiating stances.
READ MORE: ‘It Was Very Nice’: Trump Says Putin Agreed To Not Attack Kyiv For A Week
US-Mediated Abu Dhabi Talks
While the talks gained momentum, an unnamed US official on Saturday said that Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin were “very close” to setting up a meeting after the US mediated the talks.
Meanwhile, a new round of Abu Dhabi talks between Russia and Ukraine is scheduled for Sunday.
In view of the talks, US President Donald Trump – who is pushing for a deal to end the conflict – said on Tuesday that “very good things” were happening in the process.
However, several disagreements are still acting as the roadblock in the peace talks, including who gets what territory in any deal, the potential presence of international peacekeepers or monitors in post-war Ukraine, and the fate of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday described the two sides’ disagreement over who gets what territory as the one central issue, which was “very difficult” to resolve.
Russia wants Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the roughly 20 percent of Donetsk region which the Russian army does not control.
Kyiv has said it does not want to gift Moscow territory, which Russia has not won on the battlefield and which could serve as a platform in future for Russian forces to push deeper into Ukraine.
Trump Says Putin Agreed To Not Attack Kyiv For A Week
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a week, after Moscow’s strikes left buildings without heating in freezing temperatures.
“They’ve never experienced cold like that. And I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week. And he agreed to do that, and I have to tell you, it was very nice,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting, citing “extraordinary cold” in the region.
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