Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would meet US counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week as Russia intensified attacks across his country.
Russia carried out one of its largest aerial attacks overnight, firing 40 missiles and some 580 drones at Ukraine in a barrage that killed at least three people and wounded dozens, Zelensky said on Saturday.
Zelensky said he would hold “a meeting with the President of the United States”, adding he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia during the talks with Trump.
Ukraine has insisted on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin has meanwhile warned that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
A US-led push for a quick end to the war has stalled and Russia effectively ruled out a meeting between Putin and Zelensky — something that Kyiv says is the only way towards peace.
“We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no ceasefire,” Zelensky said in comments released by the Ukrainian presidency on Saturday.
“We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I have spoken about this. Both bilateral and trilateral. He is not ready,” Zelensky added.
In Russia’s latest aerial assault of Ukraine, “a missile with cluster munitions directly struck an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said earlier on social media.
He posted pictures of cars and a building on fire and rescuers carrying a person to safety amid rubble scattered nearby.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the strikes killed one person and wounded 26, with one man in a serious condition, Sergiy Lysak, the head of regional military administration, said.
‘Intense’ fighting
The strikes come a day after three Russian fighter jets violated the airspace of Estonia — a Nato member on the alliance’s eastern flank — an allegation Moscow denied.
But it triggered fears in the West of a dangerous new provocation from Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones overflew its territory.
Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones over Ukraine “together with other countries”.
Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region, “intense actions” were ongoing in the key area of Kupiansk, Zelensky said, referring to a rail hub Ukraine recaptured in its 2022 offensive.
Russian officials meanwhile said their forces had repelled “massive” Ukrainian attacks in the Volgograd and Rostov regions, while one person was wounded in the nearby region of Saratov.
The governor of Russia’s Samara region said “fuel and energy facilities” were targeted, without specifying the damage.
The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday its air defence alert systems “intercepted and destroyed” 149 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Saratov region and 15 over the Samara region.
Three rounds of direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul have failed to yield anything more than large-scale prisoner exchanges. Russia has maintained a series of hardline demands, including that Ukraine fully cedes the eastern Donbas region — parts of which it still controls.
Kyiv has rejected territorial concessions and wants European troops to be deployed to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, something Moscow sees as unacceptable.
