Despite talk of renewed diplomacy, Russia and Ukraine have not scheduled further peace negotiations, a Kremlin spokesman said -- even as fresh Russian strikes in the Donetsk region killed two civilians and left others wounded in one of the war’s most violent hotspots.
Dmitry Peskov denied information that appeared in US media over the past few days suggesting that the Vatican could host Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in June.
“There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,” Peskov told reporters in Moscow on May 22. “They are yet to be agreed upon.”
Peskov has also denied Finnish President Alexander Stubb's suggestion on May 21 that the two sides were likely to hold "technical-level talks" as soon as next week.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump had a long phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which, Trump said that negotiations toward a cease-fire would start "immediately."
Putin, however, repeated his rhetoric about eliminating the "root causes" of the war -- -- a term he uses to question Ukraine’s right to exist as well as the wider post-Cold War international order.
He added that Moscow would “propose and is ready to work with” Ukraine on a “memorandum” outlining the framework for "a possible future peace treaty.”
When asked about when the memorandum could be expected, Peskov gave no direct answer, adding that "nobody is interested in dragging out this process."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that a bilateral memorandum could be a possibility, but underlined that, so far, a potential prisoner exchange -- agreed upon in Istanbul talks -- is “perhaps the only real result.”
According to Russian and Ukrainian officials, the two countries have already handed each other lists of 1,000 prisoners of war whom they want to return in a forthcoming exchange deal.
Deaths In Donetsk
Despite Western urges for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire, as well as the phone call between Putin and Trump, the Kremlin has not halted its attacks.
On May 22, Russian strikes on the Ukrainian town of Kostyantynivka and the village of Rayhorodok in the Donetsk region killed two people and wounded two others.
In Kostyantynivka, local police reported that a 54-year-old woman died from injuries caused by munitions that hit her home. Her 27-year-old daughter was left in critical condition with blast injuries and open wounds on her head, neck, and legs.
Another woman, 51, was killed when a Russian drone struck a local shop in Rayhorodok, where she was working as a cashier.
"Over the last day, Russians launched 36 attacks on towns and villages in the Donetsk region. A total of 409 people were evacuated, including 49 children," Vadym Filashkin, the head of Ukraine's Donetsk Regional Military Administration, said.
Zelenskyy said the Donetsk region, particularly in and around the war-torn city of Pokrovsk, was still seeing the hardest fighting.
"Unfortunately, the Russians show no signals of a cease-fire, and they are not yet ready to end the war," he added.
