The Kremlin on Sunday brushed aside reports that Washington and Kyiv are preparing a proposal for a partial ceasefire for air attacks, saying it was too soon to respond before Moscow had seen any formal details.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the reports as unverified media speculation after several outlets reported that Ukraine and the United States were coordinating new peace proposals centered on halting aerial attacks.
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“We do not know how credible these reports are or where they come from. These are newspaper reports and nothing more,” Peskov told Interfax.
He added that Moscow would only assess any initiative once concrete proposals had been presented.
“We have heard statements that some new formulas may be possible. We still need to learn more about them,” Peskov said. “What happens next will depend on how closely they correspond to our interests.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the same day that Ukraine had already delivered its proposals directly to Russia.
“We have made all the necessary proposals to the political leadership of Russia to end the war with a worthy peace,” Zelensky said. “All partners know what needs to be done.”
At the same time, he stressed that Ukraine would continue expanding its long-range strike campaign until Moscow showed genuine willingness to negotiate, saying Kyiv had compiled an updated list of priority targets inside Russia.
According to Reuters, ahead of Zelensky’s visit to the United States on Tuesday, July 28, Washington and Kyiv have been discussing a new package of proposals aimed at ending Russia’s full-scale war, with a mutual halt to long-range aerial attacks expected to be one of its central elements.
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The renewed diplomatic push comes despite signs the Kremlin has little appetite for compromise. On July 22, Bloomberg, citing people close to the Kremlin, reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to resume talks with Ukraine until Russian forces seize the rest of the Donbas.
The sources also said Moscow intends to keep occupied parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, turning them into a buffer zone.
Putin has already publicly dismissed proposals for a limited de-escalation. On June 28, he said Russia had rejected an offer to halt long-range strikes and confine fighting to the partially occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, arguing it would allow Ukraine to shift troops to other sectors of the front.
Last week, on July 23, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Manila, saying afterwards that any breakthrough would require “new ideas“ after previous proposals failed to gain traction.
Despite Russia’s continued insistence on its maximalist demands, diplomats increasingly view a limited pause in long-range aerial attacks as one of the few potentially achievable confidence-building measures.
The idea comes after months of escalating strikes by both sides. Russia has intensified mass missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, frequently combining ballistic missiles with large drone swarms to strain Ukraine’s air defenses.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has stepped up deep strikes against Russian oil facilities, logistics hubs and military infrastructure, targeting strategic assets far behind the front lines in an effort to increase pressure on the Kremlin.
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