Russian shelling and airstrikes on southern Ukraine overnight killed a man and a nine-year-old girl in separate attacks, Ukrainian officials said yesterday.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, “Russians hit a residential area with guided aerial bombs,” killing the girl and wounding a 16-year-old boy, Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration head Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.
One house was destroyed and several others were damaged by the blast, he added.
Photo: AFP
In a separate assault on the city of Kherson, a “66-year-old man sustained fatal injuries” from Russian shelling, Kherson regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.
One person was wounded in a Russian drone strike in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, he said.
In Russia, Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 10 people in the Kursk region overnight, acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
Diplomatic efforts to end the war have accelerated over the past few weeks, with both sides meeting earlier this month for their first round of direct talks in more than three years. However, the negotiations in Istanbul yielded only a prisoner exchange and promises to stay in touch.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said that his government did not expect results from further talks with Russia unless Moscow provided its peace terms in advance, accusing the Kremlin of doing “everything” it could to sabotage a potential meeting.
“There must be a ceasefire to continue moving towards peace. We need to stop the killing of people,” he said in a statement on Telegram.
The Ukrainian leader also said he had discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a possible next meeting in Istanbul and under what conditions Ukraine is ready to participate,” with both agreeing that the next round of talks with Moscow “cannot and should not be a waste of time.”
Russia has said it would send a team of negotiators to Istanbul for a second round of talks on tomorrow, but Kyiv has yet to confirm if it would attend.
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