Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow is ready for a fresh round of direct peace talks with Ukraine, even as both warring countries trade long-range drone attacks.
Speaking to reporters in Minsk, Putin said Russian and Ukrainian officials are discussing the timing of a potential new meeting.
The Russian leader said that the terms of a potential ceasefire, which the Kremlin has so far rejected, are expected to be on the agenda.
The war shows no signs of abating, as US-led international peace efforts have so far produced no breakthrough. Two recent rounds of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul were brief and yielded no progress on a peace deal.
Ukraine wants the next step in peace talks to be a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin, Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said.
However, the suggestion appears likely to be a non-starter, given Putin’s recent comments. The Russian leader has said a summit meeting should take place only after the main provisions of a peace deal have been agreed, something that could take months or years.
Putin has also repeated his claim that Zelenskyy lost his legitimacy after his presidential term expired last year, an allegation rejected by Kyiv and its allies.
Russia and Ukraine trade long-range drone attacks
Meanwhile, Russian forces launched 363 Shahed and decoy drones as well as eight missiles at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said on Friday, claiming that air defences stopped all but four of the drones and downed six cruise missiles.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said 39 Ukrainian drones were downed in several regions overnight, including 19 over the Rostov region and 13 over the Volgograd region. Both regions lie east of Ukraine.
Long-range drone strikes have been a hallmark of the war, now in its fourth year. The race by both sides to develop increasingly sophisticated and deadlier drones has turned the war into a testing ground for new weaponry
Ukrainian drones have pulled off some stunning feats. At the start of June, nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged in a covert Ukrainian operation using cheaply made drones snuck into Russian territory.
According to the Ukrainian air force, around 359 incoming drones were either intercepted or electronically jammed.
Ukraine halts Russian advance in Sumy
On Thursday, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed Ukrainian forces halted Russia’s recent advance into the north-eastern Sumy region and stabilised the front line near the Russian border.
General Syrskyi said the successful defence in Sumy has prevented Russia from redeploying around 50,000 troops, including elite airborne and marine brigades, to other parts of the front line.
Ukraine is employing new countermeasures against Russia’s escalation of combined missile and drone attacks, officials say. Instead of relying on ground-based mobile teams to shoot down Shaheds, Ukraine is deploying interceptor drones it has developed.
Moscow has not yet commented on his claim. Before this, Russian forces had made slow, costly advances along parts of the roughly 1,000-kilometre front line, shelling the Sumy region in several attacks that killed civilians and destroyed buildings.
Ukrainian authorities say their outnumbered forces relied heavily on drones to hold back Russian troops, just as US-led international efforts to broker a ceasefire went on.
Those months-long talks have failed, with the only tangible result being the agreement to carry out a series of prisoner-of-war exchanges.
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