Russia and Ukraine have scheduled no further direct talks on ending their more than three-year war, the Kremlin said Thursday, almost a week after the first face-to-face engagement between their delegations since 2022, and days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced they would start ceasefire negotiations 鈥渋mmediately.鈥
鈥淭here is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,鈥 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. 鈥淭hey are yet to be agreed upon.鈥
During two hours of talks in Istanbul last Friday, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, in what would be their . Apart from that step, the meeting delivered no significant breakthrough.
Several months of intensified U.S. and European pressure on the two sides to accept a ceasefire and negotiate a settlement have yielded little progress. Meanwhile, Russia is to capture more Ukrainian land, Ukrainian government and military analysts say.
Putin’s proposals
Putin said earlier this week that Moscow would 鈥減ropose and is ready to work with鈥 Ukraine on a 鈥渕emorandum鈥 outlining the framework for 鈥渁 possible future peace treaty.鈥 Putin has effectively rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposal that Ukraine has accepted. He has linked the possibility to a halt in Ukraine’s mobilization effort and a freeze on Western arms shipments to Kyiv as part of a comprehensive settlement.
The major prisoner swap is a 鈥渜uite laborious process鈥 that 鈥渞equires some time,鈥 Peskov said.
But he added: 鈥淭he work is continuing at a quick pace, everybody is interested in doing it quickly.鈥
Peskov told Russian news agency Interfax that Moscow had provided to Kyiv a list of prisoners it wants released in the swap. 鈥淲e have not yet received a counter list from Kyiv. We are waiting,鈥 he told Interfax.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday that preparations are underway for the potential prisoner exchange, which he described as 鈥減erhaps the only real result鈥 of the talks in Turkey.
Peskov disputed a report Thursday in the Wall Street Journal that Trump told European leaders after his phone call with Putin on Monday that the Russian leader wasn鈥檛 interested in talks because he thinks that Russia is winning.
鈥淲e know what Trump told Putin, we don鈥檛 know what Trump told the Europeans. We know President Trump鈥檚 official statement,鈥 Peskov said. 鈥淲hat we know contrasts with what was written in the article you mentioned.鈥
Russian capital targeted by drones for the second night
Apart from the continuing war of attrition along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, which has killed tens of thousands of troops on both sides, the warring parties have been firing dozens of long-range drones at each other鈥檚 territory almost daily.
Russia鈥檚 Defense Ministry said that it had shot down 105 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 35 over the Moscow region. It was the second straight night that Kyiv鈥檚 forces have targeted the Russian capital.
More than 160 flights were delayed across three of Moscow鈥檚 four main airports, the city鈥檚 transport prosecutor said, as officials grounded planes citing concerns for passenger safety.
The attack prompted some regions to turn off mobile internet signals, including the Oryol region southwest of Moscow, which was targeted heavily on Wednesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that air defenses downed 485 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea between late Tuesday and early Thursday, including 63 over the Moscow region, in one of the biggest spates of drone attacks.
It was not possible to verify the numbers.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 128 drones at Ukraine overnight.
Among the targets were Ukraine鈥檚 central Dnipropetrovsk region, damaging an industrial facility, power lines, and several private homes, regional governor Serhii Lysak said on Telegram.
In Kyiv, debris from a Russian drone fell onto the grounds of a school in the capital鈥檚 Darnytskyi district, according to the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, Tymur Tkachenko. No injuries were reported.
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