Kremlin accused Ukraine 'lacks will' to continue peace talks

On Wednesday, the Kremlin accused Kyiv of refusing to continue talks to halt hostilities that began after Russian President Vladimir Putin dispatched troops to pro-Western Ukraine.

The talks are not progressing, and we note the Ukrainian negotiators’ complete lack of desire to continue this process,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, Kyiv’s chief negotiator, said on Tuesday that talks with Moscow were “on hold” after being held regularly in the early phases of the conflict but yielding no results.

Peskov also maintained that the Kremlin had no information about a Russian soldier accused of killing an unarmed civilian in Ukraine, the first war crimes trial in the country since Moscow dispatched forces on February 24.

“We still don’t know anything. “Our capacity to provide assistance is also severely hampered because to the absence of our diplomatic representative there,” Peskov said.

He claimed that many such cases reported by Ukraine are “simply fake or staged”.

The question of whether Russia will keep the lands it took during the conflict or retreat to its internationally recognised borders is a major sticking point in the discussions.