Russia on Thursday invited Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to come to Moscow for the peace talks as the war between the two countries is about to enter its fifth year, news agency Reuters reported citing a Kremlin statement.
Any meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy would need to be well prepared and results-oriented, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday. He said Zelenskuy's safety would be guaranteed if he came to Moscow.
This comes after the latest exchange of war dead and rumours that Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to stop striking each other's energy infrastructure.
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, however, said that Russia had not yet received a response to its invitation.
A similar invitation was sent to Zelenskyy last year, which he had declined saying he could not to go to the capital of a nation that was firing missiles at his country every day. He also suggested that Putin come to Kyiv instead.
This also comes amid US-mediated peace talks in Abu Dhabi. According to an unnamed US official told Axios on Saturday Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin were "very close" to setting up a meeting after the US-mediated talks.
The 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.
A new round of Abu Dhabi talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiating delegations is scheduled for Sunday, and U.S. President Donald Trump had recently claimed 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.
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.
'Putin agreed to one-week ceasefire': Trump
Trump on Thursday said he personally asked Russian President Vladimir Putin not to fire on Kiev (Ukraine) and the cities and towns for a week due to extremely cold conditions, and that he agreed to do so.
He says, "Because of the cold, extreme cold, they have the same that we do. I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kiev and the cities and towns for a week during this. It's extraordinary. It's not just like cold, it's extraordinary cold, record-setting cold. Over there, too, they're having the same. It's a big pile of bad weather, the worst. But it was really — they said they've never experienced cold like that. And I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kiev and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that. And I have to tell you, it was very nice. A lot of people said, don't waste the cold, you're not going to get that. And he did it, and we're very happy that they did it. Because on top of everything else, that's not what they need is missiles coming into their towns and cities. So I just thought I should say, I thought it was a very, very good thing. And Ukraine was — almost they didn't believe it, but they were very happy about it, because they are struggling badly."
