(Reuters) -Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Tuesday of standing in the way of negotiations on a moratorium on attacking civilian targets, as the warring sides jockey for the favour of a Trump administration that has threatened to abandon peace efforts.
Both sides are under pressure to demonstrate progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, now well into its fourth year, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he was losing patience and would walk away from efforts to make peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who rejected a Trump proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire last month after Ukraine had agreed to it in principle, announced a unilateral one-day truce for Easter over the weekend. Kyiv largely dismissed that as a stunt and both sides accused the other of violating it.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy responded by calling for a halt to attacks on civilian targets for 30 days, and Putin said he would consider it, floating the idea on Monday of holding bilateral talks for the first time in three years.
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov repeated that Putin was interested in discussing the proposal, but Kyiv needed to “legally clear the obstacles to such contacts” to allow talks. He did not elaborate but Moscow regularly complains about a decree signed by Zelenskiy barring negotiations with Putin.
Zelenskiy responded that “there are and will be no impasses on the Ukrainian side”.
“Our proposal to halt strikes on civilian infrastructure remains on the table as well. What’s needed is genuine readiness from Russia to engage in this conversation,” Zelenskiy said on X.
TALKS IN LONDON
Trump, who has long said he would end the war quickly, has shifted U.S. policy from years of staunch support for Kyiv towards embracing Russia’s account of the war. But so far Washington has received few concessions from Moscow, which has stood by its original demands that Kyiv cede territory and be barred from ever forming military alliances with the West.
Ukraine and its European allies say that would amount to surrender and leave Ukraine helpless to defend itself from future attacks.
U.S., European and Ukrainian officials are due to meet on Wednesday in London. Zelenskiy said their primary task would be to push for an unconditional ceasefire.
No direct talks are known to have been held between the warring sides since the early months of the war three years ago. The sides separately met U.S. officials at parallel talks in Saudi Arabia last month and agreed to a pause in attacks on energy infrastructure, which both accuse the other of breaking.
Asked about an agreement to halt attacks on civilian targets, Peskov said it was a complex topic that needed to be discussed taking into account the experience of the 30-hour Easter ceasefire, without elaborating.
“If we talk about civilian infrastructure facilities, we need to clearly differentiate in what situations these facilities can be a military target,” Peskov said. He quoted Putin as saying that a civilian facility could become a military target if enemy combatants were meeting there.
Russian forces have regularly pounded Ukrainian cities, killing thousands of civilians during the conflict and causing extensive damage to Ukraine’s power supply, ports and other infrastructure. Ukraine has more recently acquired capability to attack inside Russia and has killed civilians, although in much smaller numbers.
Russian forces killed at least 35 people in a missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy earlier this month in what Kyiv said was a deliberate attack on civilians. Russia said it had hit a meeting of Ukrainian military officers.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Yuliia Dysa in GdanskEditing by Mark Heinrich, Peter Graff)
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