Moscow kept up its hammering of Ukraine's energy grid in attacks that killed at least two people overnight to Sunday, according to Ukrainian officials. At least six people were wounded in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the emergency service said. Russia also targeted energy infrastructure in Odesa region, it said. A fire broke out and was promptly extinguished. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram that repairing the country's energy system remained challenging but we are doing everything we can to restore everything as quickly as possible.
Ukraine does not shy away from the most difficult issues and will never be an obstacle to peace, Zelenskyy insisted, repeating a mantra designed to ward off accusations from Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump that Ukraine is not serious about ending the conflict. Peace must be dignified, he added. And this depends on the partners on whether they ensure Russia's real readiness to end the war.
The United States is offering Ukraine security guarantees for a period of 15 years as part of a proposed peace plan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday, though he said he would prefer an American commitment of up to 50 years to deter Russia from further attempts to seize its neighbor's land by force. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Zelenskyy at his Florida resort on Sunday and insisted that Ukraine and Russia are "closer than ever before" to a peace settlement.
President Donald Trump will host his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Sunday to try to close out a peace agreement that would end nearly four years of war sparked by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. Russia intensified its attacks on Ukraine's capital and elsewhere in the days before the meeting. The two will meet at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's private club in Palm Beach, Florida, where the U.S. president is spending the holidays.
Donald Trump claimed Friday that he'll be the one to give the final word on a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. In an exclusive interview with Politico, Trump said that, despite anything Zelensky proposes when they meet up at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, the Ukrainian president doesn't have anything until I approve it, Trump said. So we'll see what he's got.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that the United States is pushing for Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the Donetsk region to establish a free economic zone in the Kyiv-held parts of eastern Ukraine that Moscow wants to control. Zelenskyy confirmed on Thursday that his country had presented the US with a 20-point set of counter-proposals for peace amid discussions on security guarantees with top US officials, making it clear that any territorial concessions would have to be put to a referendum in Ukraine.
Russia's Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces captured the village of Pleshchiivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine on the latest claim of territorial gain by Moscow. The Russian Defence Ministry had earlier announced the capture of one village in the Dnipropetrovsk region and two in the northeastern Kharkiv region, closer to the Russian border.
Russia and Ukraine have traded blame, accusing one another of imperilling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Kyiv, Ukraine On October 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged that Ukrainian attacks had destroyed a high-voltage transmission line between the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine and Kyiv-controlled areas. Days earlier, Ukraine's leader, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russian shelling had cut the plant off from the electricity network. list of 4 itemsend of list
Zelenskyy said Russian shelling was preventing restoration of a power line needed to cool the reactors and prevent a meltdown. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, said it was working with both sides to restore the external power line. Rafael Grossi said there was no immediate danger as long as diesel generators remained in operation, providing emergency power for the facility.
Russian drone attacks and shelling killed three people and injured five others in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak wrote on Telegram. Two people were killed in Russian attacks on the Polohivskyi district, as Russian forces launched 578 attacks on 18 settlements in Ukraine's Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said. Separate Russian attacks also killed one person in Kherson, one person in the Kyiv region and one person in Donetsk, local officials reported, according to the Kyiv Independent news outlet.
