(AFP) – Russia and Ukraine traded attacks overnight, with seven killed on the Ukrainian side, authorities said on Thursday, shortly after US President Donald Trump’s envoy held talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg. Trump sought to strike an optimistic tone after US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Putin on Wednesday, saying negotiators were “maybe now the closest we’ve been” to ending the war. The Kremlin indicated it was “in principle” open to the resumption of trilateral talks involving the two sides and the United States.
But attacks did not let up in the wake of the visit. Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people had been wounded in huge barrages of 630 drones fired towards the region, 163 of which were approaching the Russian capital. The governor of nearby Tula region said Russian air defences had destroyed 70 drones. Another man was wounded in the Lipetsk region, its governor said.
In Ukraine, the attacks killed one man in Sumy and a woman in Kharkiv, both in the northeast, as well as three people in southeastern Zaporizhzhia and two in the eastern region of Donetsk, authorities said. Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media strikes had wounded 15 people in the Ukrainian capital. He said the strikes had damaged metro infrastructure at the Pivdenny Bridge, which officials said had restricted traffic between parts of the city.
Ukraine’s air force posted a warning in the early hours of “more ballistic missiles towards Kyiv” and instructed residents to stay in shelters. Witkoff had flown to Russia from a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo on Tuesday, which was aimed at smoothing over a bitter rift between Trump and the Ukrainian leader. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner also took part in the talks with Putin remotely.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Russia was “in principle, ready to resume” trilateral talks in mid-November — after the US midterm elections — and that the Kremlin wanted them to focus on post-war security. Zelensky said Ukraine also backed resuming trilateral talks.
Ushakov said Witkoff briefed Putin on “some new aspects in the approaches of the Europeans and Kyiv” from the Oslo meeting, but that “there wasn’t really much substance in them”. A summit between Putin, Trump, and China’s Xi Jinping was also being prepared in China’s Shenzhen for next month, Ushakov said, calling it “the first such meeting in history”.
During their three-hour meeting, Witkoff praised Putin for granting Trump’s request to free US citizen Stephen Hubbard, a retired English teacher in his 70s who had been detained for fighting for Ukraine — charges he denied. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian — you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that,” Witkoff said.
Witkoff said on social media the talks with Putin were “constructive” but that “there is still important work left to do”. Discussions would continue between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia at the technical level, he added. Trump returned to power in January 2025 promising to end the war in 24 hours — but more than a year of US-led talks have failed to produce a breakthrough.
In recent days, a frustrated Trump has once again pivoted away from Ukraine and back to Putin, trumpeting what he said was a deal for Russia to sell diesel and reduce prices sent soaring by his Iran war. Trump also delayed the imposition of sanctions on Russia’s war machine — a decision he defended on Wednesday as necessary to secure Hubbard’s release. “If you would’ve put those sanctions on… you could forget about him. You’d never see him again,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
Witkoff told Putin Washington was “grateful” for the diesel deal, which sparked outrage in Kyiv and across Europe. The war, Europe’s worst since World War II, has killed tens of thousands of people since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Putin has consistently rejected face-to-face talks with Zelensky and insisted Moscow intends to seize the rest of east Ukraine.
© 2024 AFP
