Talks approach as Russia launches a drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing three people.
With the United States set to meet delegations from Russia Ukraine separately in Saudi Arabia on Monday in an ongoing bid to halt the three-year war, Russia has launched a drone attack on Friday night on the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing three people and wounding 12, Ukrainian officials said.
The city was hit by 12 drones, police said. Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said residential buildings, cars and communal buildings were set on fire. Photos from the scene showed emergency services scouring the rubble for survivors.
Ukraine and Russia agreed this week in principle to a limited ceasefire after US President Donald Trump held separate calls on consecutive days with the countries’ leaders, but what actual targets would be off limits to attack remains contentious.
The three sides appeared to hold starkly different views about what the limited truce covered. While the White House said “energy and infrastructure” would be part of the agreement, the Kremlin declared that the agreement referred more narrowly to “energy infrastructure”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would also like railways and ports to be protected.
The dead in Zaporizhzhia included three members of one family. The bodies of the daughter and father were pulled out from under the rubble while doctors unsuccessfully fought for the mother’s life for more than 10 hours, Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
The Ukrainian air force reported that Russia fired 179 drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Saturday. It said 100 were intercepted and another 63 lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Officials in the Kyiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions also reported fires breaking out due to falling debris from intercepted drones.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence, meanwhile, said its air defence systems shot down 47 Ukrainian drones. Russian officials also said Moscow reserves the right to a “symmetrical response” as both sides accused each other on Friday of blowing up a Russian gas pumping station in a border area where Ukrainian troops have been retreating.
“As in 2022, provocations are being used again with the aim of disrupting the negotiation process. We are clearly warning that if the Kyiv regime continues its destructive line, the Russian Federation reserves the right to respond, including with a symmetrical response,” the ministry said.
Zelenskyy told reporters after his call on Wednesday with Trump that Ukraine and US negotiators will discuss technical details related to the partial ceasefire during Monday’s meeting in Saudi Arabia. Russian negotiators are also to hold separate talks with US officials there.
Zelenskyy emphasised that Ukraine is open to a full, 30-day ceasefire that Trump has proposed, saying: “We will not be against any format, any steps toward unconditional ceasefire.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a complete ceasefire conditional on a halt of arms supplies to Kyiv and a suspension of Ukraine’s military mobilisation – demands rejected by Ukraine and its Western allies.
“We hope to achieve at least some progress,” Russian Senator Grigory Karasin, who will lead the Russian delegation, told the Zvezda TV channel on Saturday without specifying on what issue.
He said he and fellow negotiator, Federal Security Service (FSB) adviser Sergey Beseda, would take a “combative and constructive” mood into the talks.
A senior Ukrainian official told the AFP news agency a day earlier that Kyiv hopes to secure agreement “at least” on a partial ceasefire covering attacks on energy, infrastructure and at sea.
“We are going with the mood to fight for the solution of at least one issue,” Karasin told Zvezda, which is owned by Russia’s Defence Ministry. He said his delegation was leaving for Saudi Arabia on Sunday and would return on Tuesday.
Russia’s choice of negotiators for the talks has raised questions because Karasin and Beseda are outside traditional diplomatic decision-making institutions like the Kremlin, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministry.
Karasin is a career diplomat who now sits in Russia’s upper house of parliament while Beseda is a longtime FSB officer and now an adviser to the service’s director.
The FSB in 2014 admitted that Beseda was in Kyiv during a bloody crackdown in the Ukrainian capital on pro-European Union mass protests called the Maidan Uprising.
