By Dmitry Antonov and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Thursday that Russia had reiterated its invitation for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to come to Moscow for peace talks, as U.S.-led efforts to reach a deal to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine intensify.
The Kremlin made its statement as the two countries carried out their latest exchange of war dead, and hours after it declined to comment on rumours that Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to stop striking each other’s energy infrastructure.
Washington-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi last weekend have injected some new momentum into efforts to clinch a peace deal, but profound differences persist between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiating stances. Fierce fighting is still raging, while Kyiv battles debilitating power outages caused by recent missile strikes.
An unnamed U.S. official told Axios on Saturday that Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin were “very close” to setting up a meeting after the U.S.-mediated talks.
A new round of Abu Dhabi talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiating delegations is scheduled for Sunday, and U.S. President Donald Trump – who is pushing for a deal to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two – said on Tuesday that “very good things” were happening in the process.
Major disagreements remain though, including over who gets what territory in any deal, the potential presence of international peacekeepers or monitors in post-war Ukraine, and the fate of the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, cited by the Interfax news agency, said on Thursday that Moscow had not yet received a response to its invitation for Zelenskiy to come to Moscow.
Zelenskiy rejected a similar invitation last year, saying he could not to go to the capital of a nation that was firing missiles at his country every day. He suggested at the time that Putin come to Kyiv instead.
Any meeting between Putin and Zelenskiy would need to be well prepared and results-oriented, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday. He said Zelenskiy’s safety would be guaranteed if he came to Moscow.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday described the two sides’ disagreement over who gets what territory as the one central issue which was “very difficult” to resolve.
Russia wants Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the roughly 20% of Donetsk region which the Russian army does not control.
Kyiv has said it does not want to gift Moscow territory which Russia has not won on the battlefield and which could serve as a platform in future for Russian forces to push deeper into Ukraine.
Ushakov, the Kremlin aide, said on Thursday he didn’t regard the land issue as the only key one left on the table.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on the viability of any security guarantees that Washington might be able to provide Ukraine as part of a deal, saying he doubted they could usher in an enduring peace if they were designed to keep Ukraine’s current political leadership in power.
Meanwhile, Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed leader of Chechnya in southern Russia, called for more war rather than peace in comments that reflect a belief among hardliners that Moscow is winning on the battlefield.
“I believe the war must be taken to its conclusion,” Kadyrov told reporters at the Kremlin. “I am against negotiations.”
(Reporting by ReutersWriting by Andrew Osborn Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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