Civilian infra may be spared as Russia mulls Kyiv proposal

moscow: Russia is ready to consider a proposal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a halt to attacks by both sides on each other’s civilian infrastructure, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a complex topic that President Vladimir Putin was ready to discuss. But he also told reporters there were no concrete plans at the moment for talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Both sides are under pressure to demonstrate progress towards ending the war in Ukraine, now well into its fourth year, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened last week to abandon attempts to get them to reach a deal.

Zelenskyy had said on Monday that Ukraine was ready for any form of discussion to bring about an end to attacks on civilian facilities.

“Ukraine maintains its proposal not to strike at the very least civilian targets. And we are expecting a clear response from Moscow,” he said. “We are ready for any conversation about how to achieve this.”

Asked for the Kremlin’s response, Peskov said the topic needed to be discussed taking into account the experience of the 30-hour Easter ceasefire that Putin declared at the weekend. He did not specify the connection between the two issues. Each side accused the other of breaking the Easter truce countless times and of repeatedly violating a moratorium brokered by the U.S. last month on attacking energy targets such as power grids and oil refineries.

“Actually, the president explained the complexity of this topic just yesterday, answering journalists’ questions. That is, if we talk about civilian infrastructure facilities, we need to clearly differentiate in what situations these facilities can be a military target and cannot be one,” Peskov said.

He quoted Putin as saying that a civilian facility could become a military target if enemy combatants were

meeting there.