Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said that he does not reject the idea of peace talks regarding the ongoing war with Ukraine, adding that there were no plans to intensify actions on the Ukrainian front for now.
His remarks came during a conference after a meeting with African leaders in St Petersburg, Belarus, BBC reported. The Kremlin leader said that an African and Chinese peace initiative could serve as a basis for peace talks with Ukraine.
Putin further claimed that the Ukrainian Army offensive made it hard to implement a ceasefire and that Kyiv has to accept its "new territorial reality" for negotiations to begin.
Both Russia and Ukraine have refused to hold negotiations without certain preconditions, most notably the latter's demand to restore its borders as they were in 1991, which has been heavily opposed by Moscow.
Meanwhile, Putin said that there were no plans to intensify actions on the Ukrainian front and claimed that some people were harming Russia from within, a reference to Kremlin's crackdown on dissenting voices that have increased lately.
Putin had promised to respond to what he calls a 'terrorist' act by Ukraine after an explosion on the Crimean bridge claimed two lives.
Two office blocks destroyed in alleged Ukrainian attack
Meanwhile, as the war rages on, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, reported that a night-time Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow damaged two office blocks. The facades of two city office towers were slightly damaged in the attack and no one was injured in the incident.
Earlier on Friday Russian forces pounded a key village that Ukraine claimed to have recaptured in its grinding counteroffensive in the country's southeast, while Moscow accused Kyiv of firing a missile at a city in southern Russia that officials there said wounded 15 people.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, marked Ukraine's Statehood Day by reaffirming the country's sovereignty — a rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used his claim that Ukraine didn't exist as a nation to justify his invasion.
“Now, like more than a thousand years ago, our civilizational choice is unity with the world," Zelenskyy said in a speech outside St. Michael's Monastery in Kyiv.
The Russian Defence Ministry said it shot down a Ukrainian missile in the city of Taganrog, about 40 kilometers (about 24 miles ) east of the border with Ukraine, and local officials reported 15 people were injured.
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