Europe has no intention of pursuing peace: Russia

MOSCOW — Europe continues to bet on the prolonged conflict in Ukraine and the escalation of tensions, showing no consideration for peace, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a regular news briefing on Thursday.

"The Kyiv regime's European backers, primarily those from the European Union and Britain, have no intention whatsoever of pursuing peace. Their only preoccupation is with the funds they will ostensibly transfer to the Kyiv regime and then get back," Zakharova pointed out.

"They continue to bet on the escalation of tensions, and it is precisely for this reason that they want the hostilities to drag on until the last Ukrainian," she said.

Zakharova further stressed that Russia has always maintained an open stance toward cooperation with the West, adding that the Russian side has only one condition: full respect for international law.

Russia's readiness to formally confirm that it has no aggressive plans against NATO and EU countries on a reciprocal basis is a natural and logical continuation of its consistent and principled stance, she said.

Slimmed-down version

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented a 20-point draft peace plan. The draft represented a slimmed-down version of an original 28-point plan the US previously discussed with the Russian side.

However, key territorial questions remain unresolved in the new 20-point draft, Zelensky said, adding a meeting with US President Donald Trump would ‍ ‍be required to solve the most sensitive issues.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Moscow was analyzing the documents on ending the conflict brought to Moscow by Russia's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev from the United States. The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Zelensky said on Thursday that he spoke with Trump's special ‍ ‍envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner for about an hour about how to end the conflict.

"It was a ‍ ‍really good conversation: many details, good ideas, that we discussed. There are some new ideas on how to bring real peace closer, and it concerns formats, meetings, and, certainly, the timeline," Zelensky said on the Telegram app.

Trump has been pushing for a deal to end the almost four-yearlong conflict, and in recent weeks peace efforts led by Witkoff and Kushner have been slowly inching forward.

On the battlefield, Ukraine used British Storm Shadow missiles to attack a Russian oil refinery on Thursday, its military said.

Agencies - Xinhua