Russian President Vladimir Putin held more than three hours of closed-door talks at the Kremlin on Saturday with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in an effort to revive stalled efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war. The meeting came as Russia and Ukraine continued to step up aerial attacks, even as both sides agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks were under way.
The US push to end the war has lost momentum as Washington’s attention has been focused for the past six months on the Iran war. Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, last visited Moscow in January, when they also met Putin at the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials said the two US envoys will travel to Kyiv on Sunday for their first visit to the Ukrainian capital as part of the peace process.
At the start of the meeting in Moscow, Putin asked Kushner and Witkoff to convey his warm wishes and gratitude to Trump, and described the situation in Ukraine as “not simple”. Russian forces launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s Tass news agency: “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin has ordered that no strikes be carried out against Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight today.” Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready to halt strikes on Moscow until Monday and added that he had spoken on Saturday afternoon with the US delegation after its arrival in Moscow.
“From now through the end of Saturday, as well as on Sunday and Monday, Ukraine is ready to refrain from strikes on Moscow, and we expect the Russians to do the same regarding Kyiv,” Zelenskyy said.
Tass reported that the US envoys were received at the airport in Moscow by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who posted photographs of their arrival with the caption, “Welcome to Moscow Peacemakers.”
Peace efforts have been at a standstill, and Russia has intensified attacks on Kyiv and other cities with bombardments stretching into daylight, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of air defence systems. On Friday, a Russian drone struck the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, in Kyiv, one of the agencies involved in deep-strike operations inside Russia.
Ukraine’s long-range strikes have targeted Russian military facilities, oil refineries and e-commerce hubs in an effort to weaken the Kremlin’s war effort and economy, and to make ordinary citizens feel the effects of the war.
The aerial war has intensified as troops on both sides have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometre front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and air raid sirens have become part of daily life in Kyiv.
In a social media post on Saturday, Zelenskyy said Russia had carried out overnight strikes on Kyiv and Boryspil international airports and linked them to the planned US visit. “Clearly, these Russian strikes on the airports are a reaction to the discussions and preparations for the possibility of the US side using an aircraft to travel to Ukraine,” he said.
He added: “We have taken note of this Russian move, and next week we will adjust our operation accordingly regarding Russian airspace, which has become dangerous because of our drones and missiles in the sky. Of course, there are and will be no threats to diplomacy from our side.”
Russian attacks also caused civilian casualties across Ukraine. In the southern Dnipropetrovsk region, five people were killed and five others were wounded at an industrial facility, according to local military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha, who said those killed were employees at the site.
“A locksmith, an electrician, a plumber and a machinist. People of peaceful professions. They were simply working their shift. They were doing their job when enemy missiles cut off their lives,” Hanzha said.
He said a 62-year-old man was wounded and several homes and an apartment building were damaged in a separate attack on the region’s Nikopol district. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that it had struck two metallurgical plants in the region, calling them “major suppliers of metal products for Ukraine’s military production”.
The city of Dnipro and the nearby Pidhorodne community were among the places hit, Hanzha said. One person was killed and five others were injured, including two men who were taken to hospital in serious condition. A service station, a supermarket, an industrial facility, apartment buildings and vehicles were damaged. A sixth civilian was also injured in an attack on the Nikopol district.
In the eastern Kharkiv region, a Russian drone hit a house in Chuhuiv, killing at least three people and wounding a 40-year-old woman, regional administration head Oleh Syniehubov said. The dead were a 19-year-old woman, an 11-year-old boy and a 45-year-old man. He said the strike destroyed a residential building, an outbuilding and a garage, while firefighters battled a blaze and authorities searched for more casualties.
Local officials said two people were killed and another wounded in a Russian drone attack on the Bucha district in the Kyiv region on Saturday. Earlier in the day, regional military administration head Tymur Tkachenko had said two people were wounded in an overnight attack on the region.
By Saturday evening, 28 facilities in five districts of the region had been damaged, Tkachenko said. These included private homes, apartment buildings, warehouses, railway tracks, the grounds of an agricultural enterprise and vehicles.
Russian forces also repeatedly struck a shopping centre in the southern Mykolaiv region with drones overnight, damaging shops and causing fires, Ukraine’s state emergency services said. A 72-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl were wounded. The emergency services said crews responding to the attack repeatedly had to pull back because of the threat of more strikes, returning whenever conditions allowed.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired ballistic missiles from its Rostov and Voronezh regions and launched 167 attack drones overnight. These included Shahed-type drones, about half of them jet-powered, as well as Geran and decoy drones. Ukraine said its air defences shot down or suppressed 128 drones.
In Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, local authorities said Ukrainian attacks on Saturday killed two people and wounded three others. Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces shot down 53 Ukrainian drones overnight.
The talks in Moscow, the temporary halt on strikes against Kyiv and Moscow, and the planned visit by the US envoys to Kyiv came as fighting and drone attacks continued on both sides, underlining how far peace efforts remain from a breakthrough.
With PTI Inputs
– Ends
Source link
[ad_3]
