Ukraine says it has handed Russia a “memorandum” on a proposed ceasefire, urging Moscow to do the same in return, as fresh talks next week emerge as a possibility.
Russia has proposed a second round of Moscow-Kyiv talks for Monday June second, calling Istanbul “the central location for talks”. The Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergey Shoigu thanked Turkey for its “significant efforts” to support talks, saying on Thursday they had ensured “security and creating favorable conditions for the delegations’ work”.
Should these talks materialise, they would come over two weeks after the historic but unproductive first set of discussions hosted by Turkey in mid-May. Despite high hopes — and proposals for an in-person meeting between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — the talks ended without meaningful progress, beyond an agreement on a major prisoner swap.
Again, the major stumbling-block remains radically different negotiation ambitions for both sides, with Ukraine sticking to its position that meaningful peace talks can’t realistically take place while both sides continue to bomb each other. From this requirement, a ceasefire before talks becomes essential, something Russia has proven reluctant to seriously engage with.
Kyiv said on Wednesday evening that it had delivered a “document outlining Ukraine’s position on the ceasefire” to their Russian counterparts and asked for the same in return. Today, the Ukrainian Minisotry of Foreign Affairs expressed its consternation of not having yet received a reply, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha saying per Kyiv media: “Why wait until Monday? If the Russians have finally elaborated on their ‘memorandum’—after ten days of reflections and attacks—it can be passed to us right away.”
Russia, for their part, made clear they simply didn’t want their negotiating positions known publicly, and that they would rather negotiate with Ukraine next week behind closed doors. Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today: “We won’t publicly discuss the contents of the draft documents that [the parties] are supposed to exchange. The reason is because talks should always be held behind closed doors rather than in public”.
Beyond the lives of the soldiers and civilians lost daily in the grind of the war, much is at stake at next week’s talks, and not least because U.S. President Donald Trump has articulated his displeasure at the negotiations having gone no-where so far. As reported by Breitbart News on Wednesday, the President said: “We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not, and if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently”.
This in turn followed the President warning Putin that he was “playing with fire” and risked the downfall of Russia by continuing to bomb Ukraine while peace talks should have been taking place.
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