Kremlin says it remains interested in pursuing Ukraine peace talks despite overnight strike on Kyiv

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Thursday that it was still interested in pursuing peace talks on Ukraine despite a large and deadly Russian overnight strike on Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials said the attack had killed at least 15 people, including four children, in a strike on the Ukrainian capital that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said was Moscow’s answer to diplomatic efforts to end its war.

Asked if there was a contradiction between Moscow’s stated desire to make progress in peace talks and the attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that both sides were continuing to attack each other but that Russia was still interested in achieving its goals via diplomacy.

Russian forces were continuing to target Ukrainian military and military-related infrastructure, he said. Peskov has repeatedly said that Russia does not deliberately target civilians.

He said Ukraine was continuing its own strikes against Russian infrastructure too, including against civilian infrastructure.

“The special military operation continues. You can see that strikes on Russian infrastructure, often on Russian civilian infrastructure, by the Kyiv regime are also continuing.

“The Russian armed forces are also carrying out their tasks. As stated, they continue to strike military and military-related infrastructure.

The strikes are successful, the targets are being destroyed, and the special military operation continues. At the same time, Russia remains interested in continuing the negotiation process in order to achieve our goals through political and diplomatic means.”

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Gleb Stolyarov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)