While Kyiv has recently come under frequent bombardment, the residents of Moscow have largely felt safe.
That might now be changing.
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At least three people, including an Indian citizen, were killed in a drone strike on the Russian capital on Sunday. That day, the Russian Ministry of Defence declared it had shot down more than 1,000 drones in 24 hours.
The attacks come a little over a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the war in Ukraine, which has now raged for more than four years and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, may soon be “coming to an end”. They also followed a Russian assault on Kyiv that killed 24.
Putin made the remarks hinting at winding down the war to reporters during Moscow’s pared-back Victory Day parade on May 9. He even expressed a willingness to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a neutral country to sign peace accords but added: “Victory has always been and will be ours.”
This is, of course, not the first time the possibility of peace has been raised.
Before beginning his second term in the White House in January last year, United States President Donald Trump repeatedly promised to end the fighting “within 24 hours”. This has clearly not happened although a three-day ceasefire was brokered by Trump this month.
“For this announced ceasefire, not even the announced prisoner exchange has actually taken place, the least that I expected, even that didn’t happen,” Simon Schlegel, Ukraine director at the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin, told Al Jazeera. “And then, of course, there is no seamless transition from the things where there are overlapping interests – that both countries get their prisoners and bodily remains back – to the zero-sum games that concern territory, security guarantees, Ukraine’s future geopolitical alignment.” Post by aljazeera