Moscow is hoping to achieve “some progress” at talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday, a Russian negotiator told state media some 48 hours before the United States meets delegations from both Ukraine and Russia in a bid to halt the three-year conflict.
Moscow has rejected a joint US-Ukraine proposal of a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire, instead suggesting just to halt aerial strikes on energy facilities.
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Despite that offer, both sides have continued to launch aerial attacks in the run-up to the negotiations.
A Russian strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia late Friday night killed a family of three, triggering anger among Ukrainian officials.
US negotiators will meet separately with Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Saudi Arabia on Monday, in what US envoy Keith Kellogg described as “shuttle diplomacy” between hotel rooms.
Despite the flurry of diplomacy and push from US President Donald Trump, a breakthrough has so far proved elusive.
“We hope to achieve at least some progress,” Russian senator Grigory Karasin, who will lead the Russian delegation, told the Zvezda TV channel, without specifying on what issue.
He said he and fellow negotiator, FSB advisor Sergey Beseda would take a “combative and constructive” mood into the talks.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP a day earlier that Kyiv hopes to secure agreement “at least” on a partial ceasefire covering attacks on energy, infrastructure and at sea.
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“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 they were leaving for Saudi Arabia on Sunday and would return on Tuesday.
- Family killed -
Russia’s choice of negotiators for the talks has raised questions as the pair are outside of traditional diplomatic decision-making institutions like the Kremlin, foreign ministry or defence ministry.
Karasin is a career diplomat who now sits in Russia’s upper house of parliament, while Beseda is a long-time FSB officer and now an advisor to the security service’s director.
The FSB in 2014 admitted that Beseda was in Kyiv during a bloody crackdown in the Ukrainian capital in the midst of the country’s pro-EU revolution.
Ukraine has accused Russia of not genuinely seeking peace and slammed its ongoing attacks, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin saying on Tuesday he had ordered his army to stop targeting Ukrainian energy sites.
Russia fired 179 drones at Ukraine in its latest overnight barrage, the Ukrainian air force said Saturday.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, an entire family, including a 14-year-old girl, was killed when a drone crashed into their house late Friday.
“The bodies of the daughter and father were pulled out from the rubble. The doctors fought for the mother’s life for more than 10 hours, but unfortunately, they failed to save her,” Zaporizhzhia governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
An AFP photographer at the scene of one strike saw rescue workers sifting through rubble of a destroyed building, as smoke and fog hung in the night air.
“Russia has once again violated the ceasefire and killed a 14-year-old child in Zaporizhzhia with a Shahed,” President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said, referring to the Iranian-style exploding drones that Moscow has deployed throughout the conflict.
Ukraine also targeted Russia with drone attacks overnight, wounding two in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.
Zelensky meanwhile said he had visited troops fighting to defend the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk, which Russia has been trying to encircle and capture for months.
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