Kremlin signals before Lavrov-Rubio meeting that its stance on Ukraine peace talks remains unchanged

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Wednesday ahead of a planned meeting in New York between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that there were still no grounds for Ukraine peace talks to take place even though it remained open to such talks.

“For now, there are no prerequisites for moving onto a peaceful negotiating track, although we, as the Russian side, remain open to peace talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin at a trilateral meeting with Trump, expressing hope that the US would bring Moscow to the negotiating table after talks to end the nearly five-year war unravelled earlier this year.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin stood ready to meet Trump one-on-one if both leaders deemed such a meeting necessary.

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But he made it clear that Russia’s stance on the possibility of Putin and Zelenskiy meeting in person had not changed. The Kremlin has said that Zelenskiy would need to come to Moscow for such a meeting having already taken decisions Russia has been pushing for, an idea that Kyiv has repeatedly dismissed as unacceptable suggesting any talks could only be held in a neutral country.

Peskov also played down the idea of a summit: “Generally speaking, in any other circumstances, it would be inappropriate to hold a summit meeting before the groundwork has been laid at expert level, as this would be a waste of time,” he said.