Ukraine
accuses Moscow of ‘hollow statements about peace’ after latest attack
Ukrainian
officials say 88 injured in missile strike as US and Russian officials start
talks on ceasefire deal
Pjotr Sauer
and agencies
Mon 24 Mar
2025 21.57 GMT
Ukraine has
accused Moscow of making “hollow statements about peace” after 88 people were
injured in a Russian missile attack as US and Russian officials began talks
that Washington hopes will mark the first step toward lasting peace.
Seventeen
children were among the casualties after the missile hit schools and
residential buildings in the city of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said late on
Monday, as Moscow appeared to be exploiting the window before any ceasefire to
launch attacks on Ukraine.
“Every day
like this, all the nights with Russian missiles and drones against our country,
every day of the war means losses, pain and destruction that Ukraine never
wanted,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in his nightly video
address.
Ukraine’s
foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said: “Instead of making hollow statements
about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end its war on civilians.”
Shortly
after Zelenskyy’s comments, Russian media reported that US and Russian
officials had ended 12 hours of talks in Saudi Arabia as Donald Trump pushes to
broker a limited ceasefire.
Russian
media reported that a draft joint statement had been sent to Moscow and
Washington for approval, with the parties aiming to release it on Tuesday.
Ukraine and
Russia have agreed in principle to a one-month halt on strikes on energy
infrastructure after Trump spoke with the countries’ leaders last week. But
uncertainty remains over how and when the partial ceasefire would take effect –
and whether its scope would extend beyond energy infrastructure to include
other critical sites, such as hospitals, bridges and vital utilities.
US officials
held initial talks with Ukraine on Sunday evening and negotiated separately
with Russia on Monday, with most meetings taking place at the Ritz-Carlton
hotel in Riyadh.
The US is
expected to shuttle between the two countries to finalise details and negotiate
separate measures to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea. “The
ultimate goal is a 30-day ceasefire, during which time we discuss a permanent
ceasefire. We’re not far away from that,” said the US special envoy Steve
Witkoff in a podcast with the far-right commentator Tucker Carlson over the
weekend.
As the
Russia-US talks began in Riyadh, Trump said he expected Washington and Kyiv to
sign a revenue-sharing agreement on Ukrainian critical minerals soon.
Trump also
told reporters the US was talking to Ukraine about the potential for its firms
to own Ukrainian power plants.
Speaking to
reporters in Washington, Trump listed issues he said were on the table: “We’re
talking about territory right now. We’re talking about lines of demarcation,
talking about power, power-plant ownership.”
Ukrainian
officials have backed the signing of a minerals deal, but Zelenskyy has
publicly rejected the idea of US firms owning Ukrainian power plants.
The lead-up
to the talks was marked by a series of pro-Russian statements by Witkoff –
tapped by Trump as his personal envoy to Putin – in which he appeared to
legitimise Russia’s staged referendums in four Ukrainian regions.
Speaking
with Carlson, Witkoff claimed that in the four regions where Moscow held widely
condemned referendums on joining Russia, “the overwhelming majority of the
people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule”.
The
referendums in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces were widely
rebuked in the west as illegitimate and are viewed as a thinly veiled attempt
to justify Russia’s illegal annexation of the regions. Their annexation marked
the largest forcible seizure of territory in Europe since the second world war.
In the
interview with Carlson, Witkoff also claimed Putin had commissioned a portrait
of Trump “by a leading Russian painter” that the envoy had brought back with
him after a trip to Moscow.
Witkoff went
on to say that after the assassination attempt on Trump last July, Putin told
him that he visited his local church, met his priest and prayed for Trump. “Not
because he was the president of the United States or could become the president
of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was
praying for his friend,” Witkoff said.
“I don’t
regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war and all
the ingredients that led up to it,” he added.
Witkoff’s
willingness to echo Kremlin talking points and his praise for Putin are likely
to heighten anxiety in Ukraine and across European capitals.
In an
interview with Time magazine published on Monday but conducted before Witkoff’s
remarks, Zelenskyy said some US officials had begun to take Putin at his word
even when it contradicted their own intelligence.
“I believe
Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through
information,” he said. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians
do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”
Moscow and
Kyiv remain far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace treaty,
with no sign that Putin has relinquished any of his maximalist aims in the war
against Ukraine.
Moscow has
set out several maximalist conditions for any long-term settlement – most of
which are non-starters for Kyiv and its European allies. These include a halt
to all foreign military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, restrictions
on the size of its armed forces, and international recognition of the four
Ukrainian regions Russia illegally annexed following staged referendums in
2022.
The Kremlin
has also signalled it would reject any presence of western troops in Ukraine –
something Kyiv views as essential to securing lasting security guarantees.
Ukraine
remains deeply sceptical of any Russian agreement, pointing to past instances
where Moscow failed to honour its commitments.
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