Russian diplomats see 'certain positive shifts' in talks, Putin says

There were "certain positive shifts" in the talks that were undertaken the day before between Moscow and Kyiv, the Russian President said.

In remarks made to Belarusian President, Alexander Lukashenko, Vladimir Putin reportedly said: "There are certain positive shifts, negotiators on our side tell me."

And although he did not provide further details, he did add that negotiations were being carried out "practically on a daily basis".

For his part, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was on record as having said that the war would only stop when Putin accepted that he had made "a disastrous miscalculation" and pulled his country's military back.

"Vladimir Putin has himself made it very difficult to find an off ramp, and he has, I think, driven his tank, so to speak, down a cul de sac from which it will be very hard to extricate himself but he must."

Geopolitical analysts weigh in

For his part, Niall Ferguson reportedly told CNBC that he thought that Washington was "missing an opportunity" by leaning on sanctions.

The senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University believed that a deal between Kyiv and Moscow was possible if the latter was willing to entertain adopting neutrality and taking NATO membership off the table.

To back up his case, he pointed to a 2014 proposal to that effect from former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

"It is clear that President Zelensky is open to that idea, which is a major shift in Ukraine’s position for the sake of trying to save his country from further destruction," he told CNBC.

Anna Ohanyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was in a similar frame of mind.

She reportedly agreed with Ferguson regarding the need for a diplomatic push to de-escalate, to implement a ceasefire and negotiate on "bigger issues".

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