Russian President Vladimir Putin has said an immediate resumption of peace talks with Ukraine is unlikely, citing UAV attacks on Moscow during last month's parliamentary election.
In a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday, Putin said Moscow was ready to resume talks with Kyiv after the parliamentary election. However, the UAV attacks on the capital have made the resumption of trilateral peace talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States unlikely.
"By launching a large-scale UAV attack on Moscow, other cities and polling stations on the most important day of the election, and by targeting a number of people involved in organizing the vote, the Kyiv authorities have in effect cut off the possibility of immediately resuming the negotiation process," said Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin's foreign policy aide, describing the call with Trump.
"As the president said, we will now assess when it may be possible to resume these talks," he added, referring to the trilateral negotiations.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that Russia's war in Ukraine was in a dangerous stalemate and that the United States would keep pushing for a deal to end the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier this week that his country was ready to hold trilateral talks with the United States and Russia this month.
U.S.-Russia diesel deal
Earlier on Friday, Donald Trump announced after his call with Putin that Russia had agreed to supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the U.S. and global markets.
The deal drew criticism from U.S. lawmakers, Zelenskyy and European allies.
Zelenskyy called the deal "a gift for Putin."
"All that money goes into the war against people, against Ukraine, against all of us. I think our team is simply being used as a smoke screen. And that is certainly not fair," he said in a statement.
Reacting to the U.S.-Russia diesel deal, a government spokesman said the United Kingdom would continue to "keep up the pressure on Russia through the toughest sanctions regime Britain has ever imposed."
