Russia has renewed its hardline demands for ending the Ukraine war, ruling out a ceasefire or comprehensive negotiations with Ukraine unless it withdraws from the eastern Donbass region.
"In order for there to be a ceasefire and a window for full-scale peace talks to open... President Zelenskyy must give the order for Ukraine's army to ceasefire and to leave the territory of the Donbas, to leave the Russian regions," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday during a conference call.
The comments come less than a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the more than four-year conflict was "heading to an end", without elaborating.
Russia currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine: the entirety of the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk — collectively referred to as the Donbas — and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
It claims all five regions as its own, following hastily-organised referendums widely seen by the international community as illegitimate.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected Russia's demands, saying ceding to them would be tantamount to surrender.
Fresh attacks on energy infrastructure
Meanwhile, Ukraine's military said it had struck a Russian oil terminal, a refinery and a gas processing plant as Kiev renews attacks on energy infrastructure after a short-lived ceasefire.
The Tamanneftegas terminal in the Krasnodar region and gas plant in Astrakhan have been attacked, Ukraine's General Staff and drone forces commander Robert Brovdi said on the Telegram app on Wednesday. Both facilities are in southern Russia.
The strikes caused fires at reservoirs, they added.
A refinery in Yaroslavl, located northeast of Moscow, was also struck, the General Staff added. Primary oil refinery units were hit, according to the statement.
Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil facilities as Moscow uses revenues generated from its huge hydrocarbon reserves to finance its war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year.
