Three-way talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the US on ending the more than four-year-long war could take place in October, the Kremlin said on Sunday, according to Russian media.
“We do not rule out such a possibility; we are talking about the foreseeable future,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, according to Russia's RIA and TASS news agencies.
US pushes to revive stalled peace efforts
Washington has been seeking to revive long-stalled efforts to end the conflict, with US negotiators visiting Kyiv and Moscow and US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin holding talks over the phone.
Several previous rounds of negotiations have failed, while US-led efforts stalled as Trump's attention shifted to the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran in the Middle East.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview released on Saturday that he would be willing to meet Putin for talks at the G20 summit in Miami in December.
Kremlin rejects Zelensky's Miami meeting proposal
Peskov, however, ruled out such a meeting in Miami as “impossible” while speaking to AFP in New Delhi on Saturday. He reiterated Moscow's demand that a meeting could take place only in the Russian capital.
Putin has repeatedly rejected proposals for a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky aimed at negotiating an end to the conflict, which has killed thousands of people and severely affected the economies of both countries.
Moscow and Kyiv have stepped up long-range strikes against each other in recent months, resulting in the highest civilian death toll since the early stages of the war.
Previous negotiations fail to yield breakthrough
Earlier rounds of talks have failed to produce an agreement, with Moscow so far unwilling to drop its conditions for ending the fighting. These include its demand that Ukraine cede territory in the east that Russian troops have not captured.
Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov said on Sunday that there was so far no “coordinated package” on which negotiations could be based.
“At present, there is the idea that we need to reach an agreement on the territorial issue. But there are also many other questions,” Ushakov said.
