Putin meets with US envoys at the Kremlin in new Ukraine peace talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Saturday for talks to try to revive a stalled push to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

The envoys’ visit came as both sides escalated aerial attacks. Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy both agreed to pause strikes on each other’s capitals while the talks took place.

Washington’s push to end the fighting has lost momentum as U.S. attention has been focused for the past six months on the Iran war. The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was in January, when they also held talks with Putin at the Kremlin.

A first trip to Kyiv for the American emissaries

Both U.S. envoys will also visit Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for the first time in the peace process on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said.

At the start of the meeting in Moscow, Putin asked Kushner and Witkoff to pass on his warm wishes and gratitude to Trump, and described the situation in Ukraine as “not simple.” Russian forces launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin has ordered that no strikes be carried out against Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight today,” presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s Tass news agency.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was prepared to halt strikes on Moscow until Monday. He said he spoke on Saturday afternoon with the U.S. delegation after their 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,” he said.

The U.S. envoys were met at the airport in Moscow by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Tass reported. Dmitriev shared photos of him meeting with the U.S. delegation as they disembarked, alongside the caption, “Welcome to Moscow Peacemakers.”

Peace process has been at a standstill

With peace efforts stalled, Russia has intensified its attacks on Kyiv and other cities with relentless bombardments stretching into daylight hours, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of air defense systems.

On Friday, a Russian drone hit one of the most important government buildings in Kyiv — the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU, which is one of the agencies involved in carrying out deep-strike operations inside Russia.

The long-range strikes by Ukraine have hit Russian military facilities, oil refineries and e-commerce hubs, seeking to undermine the Kremlin’s war effort and economy, as well as make ordinary citizens feel the consequences of the war.

Zelenskyy links Russian strikes to envoys’ visit

The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometer (775-mile) front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv.

In a social media post on Saturday, Zelenskyy said that Russia had carried out overnight strikes on Kyiv and Boryspil international airports, and linked the attack to the planned U.S. visit.

“Clearly, these Russian strikes on the airports are a reaction to the discussions and preparations for the possibility of the U.S. side using an aircraft to travel to Ukraine,” he said.

“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.”

Strikes kill 5 at Ukrainian industrial site

Russian attacks killed five people and wounded five others at an industrial facility in Ukraine’s southern Dnipropetrovsk region, local military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said. He described those killed as 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,” 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, Hanzha said.

In a statement on Saturday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had carried out strikes on two metallurgical plants in the region, describing them as “major suppliers of metal products for Ukraine’s military production.”

A further two people were wounded in an overnight Russian attack on Ukraine’s Kyiv region, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration. In the Boryspil district, a fire sparked by a strike partially destroyed a nine-story residential building.

Russian forces also repeatedly struck a shopping center in the southern Mykolaiv region with drones overnight, damaging retail premises and sparking fires, Ukraine’s state emergency services said. A 72-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl were wounded.

Emergency crews responding to the attack were repeatedly forced to withdraw to safety because of the threat of further strikes, returning whenever conditions allowed, the emergency services said.

Russia launched ballistic missiles from its Rostov and Voronezh regions and deployed 167 attack drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. The drones included Shahed-type aircraft — around half of them jet-powered — as well as Geran and decoy drones. Ukrainian air defenses shot down or suppressed 128 drones, according to the air force.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian attacks wounded three people, including a 14-year-old girl, in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, local officials said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in statement that its forces had shot down 53 Ukrainian drones overnight.

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The Associated Press