Russia’s draft peace memorandum could include likely dates to end Ukraine war, says diplomat

Russia is preparing a memorandum on Ukraine that will outline the principles and tentative timeframe of the settlement, said Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a briefing.

“Russia continues developing a draft memorandum regarding the future peace treaty, defining a number of aspects, such as the principles of the settlement, the timeline of the potential peace agreement, and the possible ceasefire for a limited time period if relevant agreements are reached,” she said.

“As soon as the memorandum is ready, and I would like to note that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is literally daily commenting on the process of its development, it will be transferred to Kyiv. We hope that the Ukrainian side is doing the same and will send us their draft as they receive the Russian document,” Zakharova stressed.

Russia and Ukraine held the first round of talks in Istanbul on May 16.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had said earlier on May 11 that Moscow was proposing to the Kyiv regime to resume the talks it halted in 2022 directly and without any preconditions, following which Ukraine agreed to take part in the talks on the prodding of US President Donald Trump.

Till then, Zelensky had been stressing that a 30-day ceasefire was a mandatory precondition for starting talks with Moscow.

After the talks, Moscow and Kyiv agreed to swap the prisoners of war under a “1,000 for 1,000” formula, present their concept of the potential future ceasefire, outlining it in detail, and continue the negotiation process.

The Ukrainian and Russian delegations agreed to present their visions of a ceasefire in written form.

Russian Presidential Aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, said that the Russian side was satisfied with the outcome of the Istanbul talks.

On May 19, following talks with Trump, Putin stated that it was necessary to “simply determine the most effective ways to move toward peace.”