Ukraine wants to negotaite with Russia again next week, President Vladimir Zelensky has proposed.
The proposal has been revealed by secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and head of Kiev’s delegation to the Istanbul talks.
NSDC Secretary Umerov said that he had invited the Russian side to hold the next meeting next week. “The negotiations need to be sped up,” Zelensky said in a video message posted on telegram.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed hope that Kiev would act in the spirit of the agreements that had already been reached “and will continue the negotiation process.”
“Agreements with the US may be behind the new Ukrainian proposal,” according to a Der Spiegel a Germany newspaper.
According to it (Der Spiegel), a recent visit by US Special Presidential Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg to Ukraine points to this development of events.
Despite the invitation to a negotiating table, Russia has continued to pound Ukrainian cities. In the latest strikes, three people died on Saturday.
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 Serhiy 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.
Russia, meanwhile, 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.
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 on Friday 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.
