Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said that his country is aiming for a peace summit by the end of February with the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres as mediator, Associated Press reports. Russia could only be invited to such a summit if the country faced a war crimes tribunal first, said Dmytro Kuleba. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry says that Russia never went through the legal procedure for acquiring membership and taking the place of the USSR at the U.N. Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"The Kyiv regime is trying to drag deeper the United States and other NATO members into the Ukrainian conflict hoping for their headlong collision with Russia", Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with TASS.

"Moscow's proposals for settlement in Ukraine are well known to Kyiv and either Ukraine fulfils them for their own good or the Russian army will resolve the issue", TASS agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. “West’s political course, which is aimed at the total restraint of Russia, is extremely dangerous and poses risks of direct armed clash between nuclear powers. There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it must be never unleashed", said Sergey Lavrov.