Ukraine accused Moscow of making a “hollow statement on peace” after 88 people were injured in a Russian missile attack as US and Russian officials began talks that Washington wanted to serve as the first step towards peace.
17 children were among the victims, Ukrainian officials said that after missiles were attacked by school and residential buildings in the city of Smie city, Madisar appears to be misusing windows before a ceasefire to launch an attack on Ukraine.
“Every day, every night with Russian missiles and drones against our country, every day of war means loss, pain and destruction that Ukraine never wanted,” Ukrainian President Volodymie Zelensky said at the evening video address.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andri Sibikha said, “Instead of making a false statement about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end the war with civilians.”
Shortly after Zelensky’s comments, Russian media reported that US and Russian officials had finished 12-hour talks in Saudi Arabia as Donald Trump pushed to mediate a limited ceasefire.
Russian media reported that draft joint statements have been sent to Moscow and Washington for approval, and the parties are aiming to release them on Tuesday.
Ukraine and Russia, in principle, agreed to a one-month suspension on energy infrastructure strikes after Trump spoke with country leaders last week. However, uncertainty remains as to when and how a partial ceasefire will be effective, and whether its scope will expand beyond energy infrastructure to include other important sites such as hospitals, bridges, and critical utilities.
US authorities held their first consultation with Ukraine on Sunday evening, negotiating separately with Russia on Monday, with most meetings being held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh.
The US is expected to close the two countries to finalize details and negotiate individual measures to ensure the safety of transportation in the Black Sea. “The ultimate goal is a 30-day ceasefire. During that time, we will discuss a permanent ceasefire. We are not far from that,” said US Special Mission Steve Witkoff on a podcast with far-right commentator Tucker Carlson over the weekend.
When Russian talks began in Riyadh, Trump said he hopes Washington and Kiev will soon sign revenue sharing agreements on Ukraine’s key minerals.
Trump also said he is talking to Ukraine about the possibility that the US will own Ukraine and Ukrainian power plants.
Speaking to a Washington reporter, Trump listed the issues he mentioned. “We’re talking about territory now. We’re talking about boundaries, power, power plant ownership.”
Ukrainian officials support signing the mineral trade, but Zelensky publicly rejected the idea of a US company that owns a Ukrainian power plant.
The introduction into consultations was characterized by a series of pro-Russia statements by Witkov, who was tapped by Trump as a personal envoy to Putin.
Speaking to Carlson, Witkov argued that “the overwhelming majority of people show that they are under Russian rule” in four regions where Moscow has a referendum widely condemned for joining Russia.
The referendum in the states of Luhansk, Donetsk, Harson and Zaporidia is widely blamed for illegality in the West and is seen as a thinly covered attempt to justify the illegal annexation of Russian regions. Their annexation marked the largest forced seizure of territories in Europe since World War II.
In an interview with Carlson, Witkov also claimed that Putin had commissioned a portrait of Trump “by a major Russian painter” that the envoy had brought with him after his trip to Moscow.
Witkoff said he visited a local church last July, after an attempted assassination in Trump, where he told him he had visited a local church, met a priest and prayed for him. “Not because he was the president of the United States, not because he could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and prayed for his friends,” Witkoff said.
“I don’t think of Putin as a bad guy. It’s a complicated situation, and it’s all the elements that led to it,” he added.
Witkov’s willingness to echo the points of the Kremlin story and his praise for Putin is likely to raise anxiety in Ukraine and the European capital.
In an interview with Time Magazine, released Monday but before Witkov’s remarks, Zelensky said he began to bring President Putin to his words, even when some US officials contradicted his intelligence.
“I think Russia has influenced some of the people on the White House team through information,” he said. “Their signal to the Americans was that Ukrainians didn’t want to end the war and that something should be done to force them.”
Moscow and Kiev had no indication that Putin had abandoned his maximalist aims in the war with Ukraine.
Moscow has set several maximum terms for any long-term settlement. Most of them are non-starters for Kyiv and its European allies. These include the suspension of all foreign military aid and sharing of intelligence reports with Ukraine, restrictions on the size of its military, and international recognition of the four Ukrainian regions of Russia that were illegally annexed after a 2022 gradual referendum.
The Kremlin also shows its rejection of the presence of Ukrainian Western troops. This is what Kiev considers to be essential to ensure a lasting security guarantee.
Ukraine remains deeply skeptical of the Russian agreement, pointing to past cases in which Moscow failed to respect its commitment.
