According to Reuters sources, US and Ukrainian officials discussed an air ceasefire plan to be presented to Russia. The talks, part of new peace initiatives to end the war, come just ahead of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskiy's visit to Washington.
Zelenskiy will attend a memorial service in Washington on July 28 for the late US Senator Lindsay Graham and will meet with President Donald Trump. The Ukrainian leader previously told American journalist Lara Lumer that he was ready to go to Trump's Oval Office at the White House or his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida to sign a peace agreement with Russia.
Kazakhstan proposes conflict freeze, Kremlin rejects
Amid these developments, Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev presented a proposal to "freeze" the Russia-Ukraine conflict during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Omsk. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, said in a statement that given Kyiv's current position, "a freeze in this form is impossible".
Peskov said, "For us, the main condition is to achieve our objectives. Putin listed the conditions necessary to stop the fighting two years ago, and if the Kyiv regime makes the appropriate decisions, everything could stop on the same day."
Background and ongoing battlefield clashes
The issue of an air ceasefire had also been on the agenda about a year ago, ahead of the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska. Bloomberg wrote at the time that the Kremlin was weighing some concessions, including an air ceasefire, but that initiative came to nothing.
The last round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place in February 2026, just before a new war broke out in the Middle East. Since then, Russian officials have frequently expressed hope that the United States would return to a mediating role.
Meanwhile, Russia continues its missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Ukraine, for its part, has recently significantly increased its attacks on oil refineries in Russia, and over the past month has also begun targeting Wildberries warehouses in various regions of Russia.
