An aborted 2022 peace deal between Russia and Ukraine could be the basis for new negotiations but there is no sign that Ukraine is ready for talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says.
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President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of agreeing a deal to end hostilities at talks in Istanbul in late March 2022 but that Ukraine backed away from it once Russian troops fell back from near Kyiv.
The deal is reported to have included clauses demanding that Ukraine adopt a geopolitically neutral status and not join NATO, limit the size of its armed forces and grant a special status to eastern Ukraine - all things which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made clear he opposes.
In remarks on Thursday, Putin again raised the subject of potential peace talks and said he was open for what he called realistic negotiations but not for talks which Ukraine is holding which seek to bypass Russia and do not, in his view, take new realities into account.
Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said a lot had changed since 2022, including what he said was the addition to Russian territory of four new regions, a reference to the parts of Ukraine which Russia has claimed as its own.
But Peskov said the aborted Istanbul deal could still be the basis for new talks and that Russia was ready for that.
When asked if Russia sensed any readiness from the Ukrainian side for talks however, Peskov said: "No, we don't sense that."
Ukraine says it wants all of its territory back, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and for every Russian soldier to leave its territory.
It is trying to drive international talks on its stance which exclude Russia.
In March 2022, about a month after Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, negotiators from Ukraine and Russia reached a provisional agreement during talks in the Turkish capital to halt hostilities.
It later emerged that Ukraine had initially agreed to forego NATO membership and remain neutral.
But the agreement was not implemented, partly due to disagreements over territorial claims.
Putin has repeatedly said that he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 to protect Russian interests and prevent Ukraine from posing a major security threat to Russia by joining NATO.
Ukraine and its allies have denounced Russia's military campaign as an unprovoked act of aggression.
Meanwhile, on Friday officials said that both warring parties have exchanged the bodies of more than 120 dead soldiers.
Ukraine had received 99 dead soldiers back, the office responsible for prisoners of war in Kyiv said via Telegram.
It said that 77 of them were killed in the Donetsk region, 20 in the Zaporizhzhia region and two in the Kharkiv region.
Russia, for its part, received 23 soldiers' bodies, the Russian news site RBK reported, citing Duma deputy Shamsail Saraliev.
with DPA
Australian Associated Press
