Kremlin says a deal to end the war with Ukraine can’t be achieved quickly

By ILLIA NOVIKOV Associated Press KYIV Ukraine AP Clinching a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war is far too complex to be done speedily a senior Kremlin official disclosed Wednesday as the U S labors to bring momentum to peace efforts and expresses frustration over the slow progress Meanwhile a nighttime Russian drone attack on Ukraine s second-largest city of Kharkiv wounded at least civilians representatives explained The United Nations announced that the number of Ukrainian civilian casualties in the more than three-year war has surged in current weeks amid Washington s attempts to broker a peace agreement Russian President Vladimir Putin backs calls for a ceasefire before peace negotiations but before it s done it s necessary to answer a scant questions and sort out a limited nuances Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained Putin also is ready for direct talks with Ukraine without preconditions to seek a peace deal he added In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Exigency Utility firefighters put out a fire following a Russian drone attack that hit apartment buildings in Kharkiv Ukraine Wednesday April Ukrainian Crisis Provision via AP We realize that Washington wants to achieve quick progress but we hope for understanding that the Ukrainian emergency settlement is far too complex to be done fleetly Peskov declared There are multiple details and an array of small nuances that need to be solved before a settlement U S President Donald Trump has previously expressed frustration over the slow pace of progress in negotiations aimed at stopping the war which he declared he could end in the first hours of his new administration in January Western European leaders have accused Putin of stalling while his forces seek to grab more Ukrainian land Russia has captured nearly a fifth of Ukraine s territory since Moscow s forces launched a full-scale invasion on Feb Trump has chided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for initiatives that he revealed were prolonging the killing field and the U S leader has rebuked Putin for complicating negotiations with very bad timing in launching deadly strikes that battered the Ukrainian capital Kyiv Trump has long dismissed the war as a waste of American taxpayer money and of lives lost in the conflict Senior U S agents have warned that the administration could abandon the peace efforts if it sees no cure That could spell an end to crucial military help for Ukraine and heavier economic sanctions on Russia The U S State Department on Tuesday tried again to push both sides to move more briskly We are now at a time where concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce quoted U S Secretary of State Marco Rubio as telling her How we proceed from here is a decision that belongs now to the president she notified reporters relating a conversation that she had with Rubio If there is not progress we will step back as mediators in this process Russia has effectively rejected a U S proposal for an immediate and full -day ceasefire making it conditional on a halt to Ukraine s mobilization effort and Western arms supplies to Kyiv Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed Wednesday that Ukraine had accepted an unconditional truce only because it was being pushed back on the battlefield where the bigger Russian forces have the upper hand In the context of the developments on the ground along the front line where the Kyiv regime is increasingly in retreat they have made an about-turn and started demanding an immediate ceasefire without any preconditions Lavrov disclosed at a briefing in Rio de Janeiro where he was attending a ministerial meeting of the BRICS grouping He also suggested that Ukraine s ceasefire promises weren t credible Both sides have accused each other of urgent previous truces Independent verification of the battlefield asserts wasn t accomplishable Meanwhile Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded in attacks every day this year according to a U N review presented Tuesday in New York The U N Human Rights Office announced in the account that in the first three months of this year it had verified civilian casualties in Ukraine That was almost more than during the same period last year Also between April - civilian casualties in Ukraine were up from the same weeks in it noted The Ukrainian air force mentioned that Russia fired Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine between Tuesday and Wednesday predominantly at the cities of Dnipro and Kharkiv