A Kremlin spokesman says Russia and Ukraine have no scheduled direct peace talks. The statement Thursday came nearly a week after their first face-to-face meeting since the early weeks of Moscow's invasion in 2022 and days after U.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on Friday over the Vatican as a potential location for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the Holy See itself would find it uncomfortable to host two mainly Orthodox Christian nations.

Moscow has played down the idea of the Vatican being a potential location for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, calling it a "fantasy" that many people are talking about.