Since last sitting down with Ukraine to talk peace, Russia has launched four of its five largest drone attacks against the country, killed more than 340 of its civilians and continued to peddle its false narrative about the unprovoked war it has been waging for more than a decade.

Ukrainian president says US lacks strength as mediator, calls for tougher international stance on Russia’s demands - Anadolu Ajansı

It restated Moscow's demands that Ukraine become a neutral country - ruling out membership of NATO - and that it protect the rights of Russian speakers, make Russian an official language and enact a legal ban on glorification of Nazism. Ukraine rejects the Nazi charge as absurd and denies discriminating against Russian speakers.

Ukraine’s security service released footage Wednesday of its attack on Russian war planes at multiple airbases across the country. In the span of a few hours on Sunday, nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged with cheaply made drones sneaked into Russian territory, according to Ukrainian officials.

This week's talks ended in a similar fashion. Again, no movement was detected on the major issues that have fueled the war into a fourth year. Coming a day after Kyiv conducted its most impressive drone attack inside Russia since the war began,

Russian and Ukrainian officials are due to hold peace talks in Istanbul with no sign they are any closer to an agreement.

Ukrainian peace talks Monday amid heightened tensions after Ukraine's drone attack on Russian airfields, and unclaimed bridge explosions.

Russian negotiators told the Ukrainian delegation directly that their so-called "peace memorandum" is an ultimatum Kyiv cannot accept, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Hungarian news outlet Valasz Online published on June 10.