Moscow on Wednesday rejected Ukraine's proposal for an Easter truce, calling it “another PR maneuver” by President Volodymyr Zelensky, Reuters reports.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that Zelensky's goal was “to restore losses, regroup and prepare Ukrainian armed forces for continued fighting.”
Zelenskiy announced on Tuesday that he would ask US mediators to deliver to Russia Kiev's offer of an Easter truce in case of attacks on energy infrastructure.
“I will definitely send this proposal to the United States tomorrow (Wednesday) and I will definitely ask them to send it to the Russian side,” Zelenskiy told reporters at an event to commemorate the victims of the Bucha massacre.
“If they attack us, we will retaliate. If they agree to stop attacks on our energy infrastructure, we will do the same,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Also on Tuesday, but before Zelenski's statements, the Kremlin said it had not received a “clearly formulated” proposal for an Easter truce.
“In Zelensky's statements that I read, I did not see any clearly formulated initiative regarding an Easter truce,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Zelensky must take responsibility and make the appropriate decision to achieve peace, not just a truce,” Peskov added.
The US, Russia and Ukraine have held three rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva this year, and a fourth was due to take place in March but was postponed due to the war in the Middle East.
Zelensky recently said that the Trump administration is making security guarantees for Ukraine conditional on the surrender of Donbas (the Donetsk and Luhansk regions), a province that Russia considers a key military objective but does not fully control.
