US ready to host Ukraine-Russia talks, wants war to ‘end by June’

The United States wants Ukraine and Russia to end their nearly four-year war by June, and has offered to host talks between the two sides in Florida next week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

US-led efforts to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II have stepped up a gear in recent weeks, but Moscow and Kyiv remain at odds over the key issue of territory.

Russia, which occupies around 20 per cent of its neighbour, is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region as part of any deal and has threatened to take it by force if talks fail.

But Ukraine says ceding ground will embolden Moscow and has signalled it will not sign an agreement that fails to deter Russia from invading again.

“The United States has proposed for the first time that the two negotiating teams - Ukraine and Russia - meet in the United States, probably in Miami, in a week’s time,” Zelensky told reporters in comments made public early on Saturday.

“They say that they want to do everything by June,” he added.

The US has mediated two rounds of negotiation between the two sides in Abu Dhabi since January, brokering a major prisoner exchange but failing to reach a breakthrough on territory.

Both Moscow and Kyiv say talks have been difficult.

Zelensky has repeatedly expressed frustration that his country is being asked to make disproportionate compromises compared to Russia.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

But Russia has rejected this, and Washington has pushed for Kyiv to convert the land it currently controls in the Donetsk region into a “free economic zone” where neither side has military control.

“Even if we come to the creation of a free economic zone, we will need fair and reliable rules,” Zelensky said.

The two sides have also failed to reach a “common understanding” on the issue of control over the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Zelensky said.

Russian forces seized the plant, the largest in Europe, at the start of the conflict and have held onto it since.

Ukraine will not tolerate Russia and the United States making deals about Ukraine behind its back, Zelensky added.

Throughout the negotiating progress Russia has launched waves of deadly strikes on Ukraine that have cut heating and power to millions during freezing temperatures.

Russian attacks earlier Saturday forced Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants to throttle their generation capacity, “creating a direct risk of a nuclear incident,” Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said.

The UN’s atomic energy watchdog issued a statement calling for “restraint.”

Russia, which denies targeting civilians, accused Ukraine on Friday of orchestrating the shooting of a top military intelligence general in Moscow, leaving him wounded. Kyiv has yet to comment.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, describing it as a “special military operation” to prevent the expansion of Nato, a war aim that Kyiv has called a pretext for an illegal land grab.

The conflict has resulted in a massive wave of destruction that has left entire cities in ruins and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, while forcing millions to flee their homes.

Zelensky on Friday had described the performance of the air force in parts of the country as “unsatisfactory,” and said that steps are being taken to improve the response to large-scale Russian drone barrages of civilian areas.

The repeated Russian aerial assaults have in recent months focused on Ukraine’s power grid, causing blackouts and disrupting the heating and water supply for families during a bitterly cold winter.

With the war about to enter its fifth year later this month following Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbour, there is no sign of a breakthrough in US-led peace efforts following the latest talks this week.

Further US-brokered meetings between Russian and Ukrainian delegations are planned “in the near future, likely in the United States,” Zelensky said.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that he had discussed with his defence minister and the air force commander what new air defence measures Ukraine needs to counter the Russian barrages. He didn’t elaborate on what would be done.

Russia fired 328 drones and seven missiles at Ukraine overnight and in the early morning, the air force said, claiming that air defences shot down 297 drones.

One person was killed and two others were injured in an overnight Russian attack using drones and powerful glide bombs on the central Dnipropetrovsk region, according to the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha.

A Russian aerial attack on the southern Zaporizhzhia region during early daylight hours injured eight people and damaged 18 apartment blocks, according to regional military administration head Ivan Fedorov.

Agencies