Ukraine Soldiers Rescue Dog From Abandoned Home Due To Russia Invasion

Ukrainian soldiers rescued an abandoned dog in an area that was reclaimed from Russian forces, according to reports.

The soldiers found the lone canine in an apartment building while inspecting abandoned homes on the frontline near Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, the BBC reported.

Ukrainian forces had retaken the area from the Russians, according to the outlet.

The dog's name was Bavaria, identification documents showed.

A volunteer took the dog in, and they hope to reunite the animal with its owner.

Ukrainian forces recently retook the region of Kyiv, but nearby villages were left abandoned, a report by Yahoo News said.

Russia promised Tuesday to scale down military operations around Kyiv and the northern city Chernihiv as peace talks with Ukraine took place in Turkey, according to Reuters.

"A decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions," Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin told reporters.

However, Russian forces bombarded the two areas just hours after it made its pledge, Ukrainian authorities claimed, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Talks between Ukraine and Russia were set to resume Friday by video, but Ukrainian lawmakers claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin was just using the talks as a "smokescreen" for his forces to regroup and re-strategize, CNN reported.

"At this particular moment, these peace negotiations are far from real negotiations," Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who chairs Ukraine's Parliamentary Committee on Integration of Ukraine to the European Union, told a small group of reporters at a roundtable hosted by the German Marshall Fund think tank.

"Definitely, I think that Putin is using this as a smokescreen, buying time to regroup ... and sending false, lying messages to the whole world," she said.

Anastasia Radina, a Ukrainian MP who heads the parliament's Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy, also claimed the peace talks "are not real."

"We feel that what Russia is doing is trying to save face. They say they are withdrawing troops from Kiev region. That's not true for one simple reason. They're not withdrawing... They were kicked (out)," Radina said.

There is only "one way out of the war, and that is for Ukraine to win," the MP said.

The U.S. has not seen "signs of real seriousness" from Russia in pursuing peace after its invasion of Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, Reuters reported.