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Ukraine Wants Summit to Jolt Talks 04/22 06:07
Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks between President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv's top diplomat said,
presenting a potential summit as a way of injecting new momentum into U.S.-led
efforts to end Russia's more than four-year invasion of its neighbor.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks between
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv's top
diplomat said, presenting a potential summit as a way of injecting new momentum
into U.S.-led efforts to end Russia's more than four-year invasion of its
neighbor.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack deep inside Russia struck a residential
building, killing a woman and a child, Russian officials said Wednesday.
Kyiv has asked Turkey to help facilitate top-level talks and has reached out
to other capitals as potential hosts, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha
said, adding that Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus.
"We are ... advocating for a (summit) meeting now to bring new momentum to
diplomacy," Sybiha told reporters on Tuesday. His remarks were embargoed until
Wednesday.
U.S.-mediated talks over the past year between delegations from Moscow and
Kyiv have made little or no headway on key issues, such as the future of four
Ukrainian regions Moscow is trying to capture but doesn't fully control. With
Washington's attention now gripped by the Iran war, the talks are on ice.
Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President
Donald Trump but Putin has refused. Putin thinks that time is on his side, that
Western military and financial support will fade and that Ukraine's resistance
will eventually collapse, analysts say.
Meanwhile, a grim war of attrition continues along the about 1,250-kilometer
(800-mile) front line that snakes along eastern and southern areas of Ukraine.
Western officials and analysts claim Russia is suffering several tens of
thousands of battlefield casualties each month, drawing comparisons to the
carnage of World War I.
Independent verification of battlefield casualties and which side has the
upper hand is not possible.
Ukraine has developed a domestic arms industry which is increasingly
producing long-range drones and missiles capable of striking deep inside
Russia. It has taken aim at Russia's oil production and manufacturing plants
that supply the Russian military.
In Syzran, a city in Russia's Samara region that is about 800 kilometers
(500 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, a drone attack caused the collapse
of a section of a residential building, local authorities said.
The bodies of a woman and a child were pulled out from under the rubble and
12 others were injured, local officials said.
Images from the scene showed a part of a four-story building reduced to a
massive pile of rubble, with emergency workers on top of it.
Russian media reports said a Rosneft oil refinery -- a frequent target of
Ukrainian drone attacks -- is located on the same street as the damaged
building.
Ukraine's aerial attacks on Russia increased by nearly four times last year,
from 6,200 in 2024 to more than 23,000 in 2025, Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of
Russia's Security Council, said last month.
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