Deadly drone strikes in Ukraine and Russia before talks
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Drone strikes have killed one person in Ukraine and another in Russia, officials say, before fresh talks next week aimed at ending the war.
An elderly woman died when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
In Russia, a civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the border region of Bryansk, regional governor Alexander Bogomaz said on Saturday.
The attacks came a day after a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian border city of Belgorod killed two people and wounded five, according to regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Another round of US-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine will take place next week in Geneva, days before the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbour.
The discussions will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn, confirmed the new round of negotiations.
The talks take place against a backdrop of continued fighting along the 1200km front line, relentless Russian bombardment of civilian areas of Ukraine and the country’s power grid, and Kyiv’s almost daily long-range drone attacks on war-related assets on Russian soil.
Previous US-led efforts to find consensus on ending the war, most recently two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues, such as the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland that is largely occupied by Russian forces.
Zelenskiy said last week that the United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal.
Previous deadlines given by US President Donald Trump have passed largely without consequence.
AP
