- Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday there had been no contact with the United States over peace talks with Ukraine.
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"The American administration forbids its wards in Kyiv to even think about talks with us, and evidently forces them to fight to the last Ukrainian," Zakharova told reporters.
Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine have been frozen since early April, when ceasefire talks brokered by Turkey in Istanbul collapsed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has played down the prospect of peace talks while Russian troops still occupy Ukrainian territory. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that peace talks with Ukraine made "no sense".
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on July 7 that his country had not "started anything yet in earnest" in Ukraine, and dared the West to try to defeat it on the battlefield.