By Dmitry Antonov
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia is ready to consider a proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a halt to attacks by both sides on each other’s civilian infrastructure, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a complex topic that President Vladimir Putin was ready to discuss. But he also told reporters there were no concrete plans at the moment for talks between Russia and Ukraine.
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 threatened last week to abandon attempts to get them to reach a deal.
Zelenskiy had said on Monday that Ukraine was ready for any form of discussion to bring about an end to attacks on civilian facilities.
“Ukraine maintains its proposal not to strike at the very least civilian targets. And we are expecting a clear response from Moscow,” he said. “We are ready for any conversation about how to achieve this.”
Asked for the Kremlin’s response, Peskov said the topic needed to be discussed taking into account the experience of the 30-hour Easter ceasefire that Putin declared at the weekend.
He did not specify the connection between the two issues. Each side accused the other of breaking the Easter truce countless times and of repeatedly violating a moratorium brokered by the U.S. last month on attacking energy targets such as power grids and oil refineries.
“Actually, the president explained the complexity of this topic just yesterday, answering journalists’ questions. That is, if we talk about civilian infrastructure facilities, we need to clearly differentiate in what situations these facilities can be a military target, and in what situations they cannot,” Peskov said.
He quoted Putin as saying that a civilian facility could become a military target if enemy combatants were meeting there. “Therefore there are nuances here that it makes sense to discuss,” Peskov said.
In the course of the conflict, civilians have been killed in both Ukraine and Russia, though far more on the Ukrainian side.
At least 35 people were killed on April 13 in a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, in what Kyiv said was a deliberate attack on civilians. Russia said it had hit a meeting of Ukrainian military officers.
Zelenskiy said on Monday the “primary task” at talks between Ukraine, the U.S. and European countries in London on Wednesday would be to push for an unconditional ceasefire.
Ukraine last month agreed to the principle of a full 30-day ceasefire but Putin responded with a long list of questions and conditions regarding its implementation.
Russia has frequently said it is open to talks with Ukraine but that Kyiv made that legally impossible under a 2022 Zelenskiy decree barring negotiations with Putin, after Russia declared the annexation of four Ukrainian regions that its forces partly control.
Peskov said that if Ukraine wanted to talk, then it should take steps to “legally clear the obstacles to such contacts”.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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