A senior Russian military officer was killed when a car exploded on Friday in the town of Balashikha just east of Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

It named the officer as Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and said it had opened a criminal case into the incident, Reuters reported.

“According to available data, the explosion occurred as a result of the detonation of a homemade explosive device filled with destructive elements,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The statement did not say who might be behind the incident. Several high-ranking Russian military figures have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine in operations blamed by Moscow on Kyiv.

Russian media outlet Baza, which has sources in Russia’s law enforcement agencies, said a bomb in a parked car had been detonated remotely when the officer – who lived locally – walked past.

The Izvestia newspaper published video footage showing a person approaching a line of parked cars outside an apartment complex and an explosion that sent parts of a vehicle flying metres into the air.

Kommersant newspaper said a second person was also killed.

Moskalik, who held the rank of major general, had participated in several high-level Russian delegations, according to defence ministry bulletins and media reports.

He joined the Russian contingent in a meeting in October 2015 of the Normandy Format, a group made up of teams from Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France who oversaw the Minsk agreements designed to end the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces that broke out in 2014.

Moskalik represented the army’s General Staff at the negotiations alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, according to the Kremlin website.

Russia’s RBC newspaper listed Moskalik as a participant in the security subgroup in the Minsk talks.

In December, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service used a bomb hidden in an electric scooter to kill Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, whom Kyiv accused of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops.

The SBU did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported death of Moskalik.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Ukraine would be ready to hold talks with Russia in any format once a ceasefire deal is in place and the fighting has stopped, Reuters reported.

The Ukrainian leader also told reporters at a briefing that a Ukrainian delegation meeting officials from Western countries in London on Wednesday would have a mandate to discuss a full or partial ceasefire.

“We are ready to record that after a ceasefire, we are ready to sit down in any format so that there are no dead ends,” Zelenskiy said in the presidential office in Kyiv.

“It will not be possible to agree on everything quickly,” he warned, noting numerous highly complex issues such as territory, security guarantees and Ukraine’s membership in the NATO military alliance.

He said that Ukraine would not recognise Moscow’s de jure control of the peninsula of Crimea as part of any deal as such a move would go against the Ukrainian constitution. Russia seized Crimea in 2014 and later annexed it.

Ukraine, he said, would be ready to partner with the United States to restore the work of the vast, Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. There had been no such formal proposal from Washington about that, however, he added.

The talks in London, which are set to bring together officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine, come amid a flurry of U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to find a way to end Russia’s war with Ukraine, read the report.

In an apparent change of plan, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not be attending the talks in London, a State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday, adding that Washington’s Ukraine envoy General Keith Kellogg would attend.

Zelenskiy said he would be happy to meet U.S. President Donald Trump later this week when they attend the funeral of Pope Francis along with other world leaders.

Ukraine, Zelenskiy said, would also step up its diplomatic outreach this week and that he would meet South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as the leaders of Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Monday bilateral talks with Ukraine for the first time since the early days of the war, and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv was eager to discuss a halt to attacks on civilian targets, Reuters reported.

While Zelenskiy did not respond directly to Putin’s proposal, he emphasized in his nightly video address that Ukraine “was ready for any conversation” about a ceasefire that would stop strikes on civilians.

The two leaders face pressure from the United States, which has threatened to walk away from its peace efforts unless some progress is achieved.

Russia and Ukraine have said they are open to further ceasefires after a 30-hour Easter truce declared by Moscow at the weekend. Each side accused the other of violating it.

Ukraine will take part in talks with the U.S. and European countries on Wednesday in London, Zelenskiy said. The discussions are a follow-up to a Paris meeting last week where the U.S. and European states discussed ways to end the more than three-year-old war, read the report.

Putin, speaking to a Russian state TV reporter, said fighting had resumed after the Easter ceasefire, which he announced unilaterally on Saturday. And Moscow, he said, was open to any peace initiatives and expected the same from Kyiv.

“We have always talked about this, that we have a positive attitude towards any peace initiatives. We hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way,” Putin told state TV reporter Pavel Zarubin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, quoted later by Interfax news agency, told reporters: “When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side.”

There have been no direct talks between the two sides since the early weeks after Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Reuters reported.

Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address, said Ukraine stood by its proposal for an end to attacks on civilian targets and was ready for any form of discussion to achieve it. Previously, the U.S. and Ukraine had framed this as a 30-day ceasefire.

“Ukraine maintains its proposal not to strike at the very least civilian targets. And we are expecting a clear response from Moscow,” he said. “We are ready for any conversation about how to achieve this.”

He said the London talks “have a primary task: to push for an unconditional ceasefire. This must be the starting point.”

Zelenskiy had earlier on Monday said an unconditional ceasefire would be “followed by the establishment of a real and lasting peace”.

Washington has said it would welcome an extension of the weekend truce. Zelenskiy said continued Russian attacks during the Easter ceasefire showed Moscow was intent on prolonging the war, read the report.

Zelenskiy also said that Ukraine’s forces were instructed to continue to mirror the Russian army’s actions.

“The nature of Ukraine’s actions will remain symmetrical: ceasefire will be met with ceasefire, and Russian strikes will be met with our own in defence. Actions always speak louder than words,” he said on X.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both said on Friday that Washington could abandon the peace talks without progress within days. Trump struck a more optimistic note Sunday, saying that “hopefully” the two sides would make a deal “this week”.

Russia’s demands include Ukraine ceding all the land Putin claims to have annexed and accepting permanent neutrality. Ukraine says that would amount to surrender and leave it undefended if Moscow attacks again.

“President Putin and the Russian side remain open to seeking a peaceful settlement. We are continuing to work with the American side and, of course, we hope that this work will yield results,” Peskov told reporters.