Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says recent peace talks with US negotiators have been good
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday he spoke with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for “about an hour” about how to end the war with Russia.
“It was a really good conversation: we went into a lot of details; there are good ideas, which we discussed,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app. “We have new ideas about formats, meetings, and, of course, time on how to bring a real peace agreement closer.”
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian Defense Minister Rusten Umerov would continue talks with the US delegation later on Thursday, adding that there was still work to be done on “critical issues” and the coming weeks were likely to be “intense.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that Russia is seeing “slow but steady progress” in peace talks with the US over Ukraine.
Zakharova said Western European powers were trying to slow progress and suggested that the US resist such moves.
Ukraine attacks Russian oil and gas facilities
Ukrainian military and security officials said on Thursday that Ukraine had launched British Storm Shadow missiles and its long-range production drones to hit several Russian oil and gas facilities.
In the past, Ukraine has used British-made missiles to attack Russian industrial sites it says are helping Moscow’s war effort.
Ukraine’s General Staff said the air force used Storm Shadow cruise missiles to hit the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.
“Many explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” the General Staff said on Telegram on Thursday.
It says the refinery is one of the largest suppliers of oil products in southern Russia and supplies diesel and jet fuel to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s security service SBU said locally-made drones hit oil product tankers at the Russian port of Temryuk in Krasnodar region and a gas processing plant in Orenburg in southwestern Russia.
The Orenburg gas processing plant, the largest in the world, is located 1,400 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented a 20-point peace plan that negotiations from Ukraine and the US have recently made. Zelenskyy admitted that he would be open to making the Donetsk region a free economic zone under the watch of international forces.
In the Krasnodar region, Russian regional authorities said two oil product tanks were on fire at the southern port of Temryuk after a drone attack.
The flames covered an area of approximately 2,000 square meters, authorities at the Krasnodar headquarters told Telegram.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine nears its four-year end and official efforts to end it have so far failed to produce tangible results, both Kyiv and Moscow have stepped up their bombardment and missile attacks on power centers.
Kyiv has stepped up its strikes on Russian oil refineries and other energy infrastructure since August as it seeks to cut Moscow’s oil revenues, a key source of funding for its war effort.
