Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has proposed a new round of peace talks with Russia next week, just hours after Russian strikes across Ukraine claimed more lives.
Two rounds of talks in Istanbul between Moscow and Kyiv failed to result in any progress towards a ceasefire, instead yielding large-scale prisoner exchanges and deals to return the bodies of killed soldiers.
“Security Council Secretary Umerov… reported that he had proposed the next meeting with the Russian side for next week,” Mr Zelensky said in his evening address.
“The momentum of the negotiations must be stepped up,” he added.
Mr Zelensky reiterated his readiness to have a face-to-face sit down with Vladimir Putin. “A meeting at the leadership level is needed to truly ensure peace – lasting peace,” he said.
Russian strikes kill three
It comes as Russian strikes killed three people across Ukraine today, authorities said, while Moscow had to briefly suspend trains in its southern Rostov region after an overnight drone attack by Kyiv.
Russia has escalated long-range aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities as well as frontline assaults and shelling over recent months, defying US President Donald Trump’s warning that Moscow could face massive new sanctions if no peace deal is struck.
Two people died after a Russian missile hit Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, an important industrial hub, which Russia’s forces have recently advanced into.
According to the regional governor Sergiy Lysak, the strike destroyed “an outpatient clinic, a school and a cultural institution” in the Vasylkivska township, with some private houses and cars damaged as well.
Drone on way to Moscow intercepted
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that air defence systems had downed one drone en route to Russia’s capital.
“The Defence Ministry’s air defence forces shot down a drone attacking Moscow. Emergency services specialists are working at the site where the debris fell,” he said on Telegram.
Russia had to suspend trains for about four hours overnight in the southern Rostov region when it came under a Ukrainian drone attack which injured one railway worker.
Many passengers remained stranded, and the suspension caused mass delays of trains in the region, which borders Ukraine and over which air traffic has been halted since the beginning of the war three years ago.
Separately, the Russian military said it had intercepted six aerial bombs and 349 drones on Saturday.
An earlier Russian salvo of 20 drones on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed at least one person overnight, its mayor said.
“Civilian infrastructure was damaged as a result of the attack. A residential high-rise building is on fire” and rescuers were pulling people out, mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov wrote on Telegram.
The Black Sea port, a UNESCO World Heritage listed city known for picturesque streets and 19th-century buildings, has been regularly targeted by Russian strikes.
The European Union yesterday agreed an 18th package of sanctions on Moscow that targets Russian banks and lowers a price cap on oil exports, in a bid to curb its ability to fund the war.
