Russia and Ukraine hit each other with heavy missile strikes overnight as diplomatic efforts to end the war were reeling, and the White House said there are no imminent plans for presidents donald trump and Vladimir Putin meet.
Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that the Russian attacks They killed six peopleincluding two children, in kyiv and the nearby region, and forced power outages throughout the country.
The Ukrainian military reported late Tuesday that used Franco-British Storm Shadow missiles launched from the air to attack a chemical plant in the Russian region of Bryansk, in the south of the country.
Putin and Trump spoke last week and agreed to hold a summit in Hungary that the Kremlin said could take place in a couple of weeks.
However, following a phone call on Monday between the two countries’ top diplomats, the White House said the next day that Trump has no plans to meet with Putin “in the immediate future.” Trump said he doesn’t want to have a useless meetingsomething Moscow also says it wants to avoid.
Russian officials said, however, that preparations for a summit continue.
“The dates have not yet been set, but thorough preparation is necessary first, and that takes time,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters. “It is clear that all this is surrounded by a lot of gossip, rumors and so on. Much of it is completely false. There is no news yet.”
The delay came after Russia reiterated to the United States its previous conditions for reaching a peace deal, including that Ukraine give up control of the entire southeastern Donbas region, three sources told Reuters.
That amounts to a rejection of Trump’s statement last week that both sides should stop at the current front lines.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by state news agency RIA as saying he could not confirm that Moscow had conveyed its position as Reuters reported.
“Preparations for the summit continue,” Ryabkov declared. “I don’t see any major obstacles. It’s a difficult process, I admit, but that’s precisely what diplomats are for.”
Throughout the first nine months of his second term, Trump has pushed to end the conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War II.
On occasions he has harshly criticized the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyand has also expressed frustration and disappointment with Putin, although he has not followed through on his repeated threats to impose new sanctions on Moscow.
Shares of European defense companies rose after news of the delay of the Putin-Trump summit. Most European governments strongly support kyiv and have pledged to increase their military spending to help Ukraine meet its defense needs.
Zelensky was scheduled to meet with the Swedish prime minister on Wednesday at the Saab development and manufacturing center, which manufactures fighters, surveillance aircraft, missile systems and anti-tank weapons.
“Russian words about diplomacy mean nothing as long as the Russian leadership does not sense critical problems. And this can only be ensured by sanctions, long-range capabilities and coordinated diplomacy between all our partners,” Zelensky said.
Ukraine declared that emergency power outages had occurred in most regions of the country as a result of the latest Russian attacks.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha called on kyiv’s international partners to mobilize “additional energy support” to avoid a humanitarian crisis as winter approaches.
