Latest strikes lay bare Russia’s intentions: Zelenskiy
Dan Peleschuk and Anastasiia Malenko |
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says large-scale Russian attacks overnight in various parts of Ukraine show Moscow is avoiding negotiations about ending the more than three-year-old war.
The offensive on Thursday included 574 drones and 40 missiles, Zelenskiy said, and was one of the largest of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour, now in its fourth year. One person was killed and 22 were wounded in the overnight strikes, authorities said.
Many targets were in western Ukraine. Zelenskiy said a missile strike on a US-owned electronics firm was a “telling” indicator of Russian intentions in US-led peace initiatives.
After a flurry of diplomacy, US President Donald Trump earlier this week said there was agreement for a bilateral meeting between Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Now the signals from Russia are simply, to be honest, indecent,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
“They are trying to back away from the need to hold meetings. They don’t want to end the war. They carry on with massive strikes.”
Most of the overnight injuries were in an attack on the US-owned Flex electronics manufacturer in Ukraine’s far-west Zakarpattia region, authorities said. Storage facilities there were damaged.
“We believe it was a deliberate strike precisely on US property here in Ukraine, on American investment,” Zelenskiy said, describing the company as a manufacturer of appliances.
“A very telling strike…at the very time when the world waits for a clear answer from the Russians on their move in talks to bring an end to the war,” he said, suggesting Russia’s interest in US-led peace efforts was not sincere.
Russia did not comment on Zelenskiy’s claim that its military deliberately hit a US-owned facility, but Moscow denies targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.
In Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, the attack killed one person, wounded three others and damaged 26 homes, said Governor Maksym Kozytskyi. Authorities in southeastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region reported damage to businesses, homes and gas lines. Two industry sources told Reuters a key gas pumping facility had been attacked, without giving a location.
Russia said Putin had repeatedly expressed readiness to meet Zelenskiy but that Ukraine was trying to undermine Trump’s efforts to resolve the conflict and its leader was illegitimate.
The defence ministry in Moscow said it had struck Ukrainian energy and airfield infrastructure as well as military industrial facilities overnight, and captured another frontline village – Oleksandro-Shultyne. Ukraine said it had hit a Russian oil refinery, a drone warehouse and a fuel base.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Trump met both Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin over the past week in pursuit of a diplomatic end to the fighting but acknowledged that the Kremlin leader may not want a deal. Zelenskiy urged Trump to react firmly if that was the case.
Chiefs of defence for the United States, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and Ukraine met in Washington DC between Tuesday and Thursday.
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready for an honest talk about security guarantees for Ukraine and accused Ukraine’s European backers of “adventurism” by excluding Moscow from their discussions.
Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of February 2022. More than a million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.
Reuters
