On Friday Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin is open to having direct talks with Ukrainian Dictator Vladimir Zelensky. The announcement comes after Kiev sent its peace proposal to Moscow but has yet to confirm if their delegation will attend the next peace meeting in Istanbul, Turkey. It is at this meeting that Russia will reveal its peace proposal. Ukraine has not confirmed if it will attend because it wants to see Russia’s proposal first.
On Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov invited Ukraine to take part in another round of direct peace negotiations on June 2. The reason Kiev has not confirmed if their delegation will attend the meeting is because they want to see Russia’s peace proposal before agreeing to a meeting.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Heorhii Tykhyi said that Russia wanting to reveal their memorandum at the meeting means that it is “likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums.”
According to Peskov on Friday, the Kremlin’s team of negotiators is already on their way to Istanbul to prepare for the next round of direct talks.
While Ukraine’s attendance at the June 2 meeting is up in the air, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the Russian delegation will be presenting its draft memorandum outlining a path towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict, as well as other ceasefire proposals.
On Friday Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Russia is stalling peace negotiations by not presenting its proposal before the meeting.
“He said Kiev wanted to see that document before sending a delegation to a new round of talks Moscow has proposed for Monday in Istanbul,” The New York Times said.
One of the main topics of concern is NATO expansion East. President Donald Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg said that Russia is rightly concerned about this but that Washington has no plans of incorporating Ukraine into the military bloc.
“It’s a fair concern and we’ve said that repeatedly … that to us Ukraine coming into NATO is not on the table,” he said. “We’re saying: okay, comprehensively we can stop the expansion of NATO coming close to your border.”
“Towards the end of the Cold War, senior U.S. officials gave assurances to the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward, in exchange for support for German reunification. Since the 1990s, Moscow has cited the alliance’s expansion to Russia’s borders as evidence of Western duplicity,” RT said.