When delegations from Moscow and Kyiv met in Belarus for secretive peace talks weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, it took Ukraine's lead negotiator less than an hour to lose hope. "These people were not prepared to negotiate," presidential aide Mykhailo Podoliyak tells AFP reporters during an interview in Kyiv, adding that "they were just technical staff with nearly no influence in Russia". Almost two years after those meetings collapsed with no breakthroughs, there are growing calls for Ukrainian officials to return to negotiations with the Kremlin to hash out a diplomatic end to the fighting -- calls Podoliyak rejects. "Russia is not ready to give in; the point of no return has been passed," he says. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES