Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a three-day halt to strikes on Kyiv, starting on Saturday, as part of preparations for a visit by a US delegation, Interfax quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.
This comes after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow on Saturday to try to revive a stalled push to end Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian state news outlets reported.
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The visit came as both sides escalated their aerial attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine would halt airstrikes during the envoys' trip and urged Moscow to do the same.
Washington’s push to end the fighting, now in its fifth year, has lost momentum as US attention has been focused for the last six months on its war with Iran.
The envoys were met at the airport by Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Russia’s state news agency Tass said. Dmitriev shared photos of him meeting the US delegation as they disembarked, alongside the caption, “Welcome to Moscow Peacemakers.”
The last known visit to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, was in January, when they met Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. They have never visited Kyiv, but Zelensky said he was expecting them in the Ukrainian capital on Sunday.
With peace efforts stalled, Russia intensified its attacks on Kyiv and other cities with relentless bombardments recently stretching into daylight hours, taking advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of air defence systems.
On Friday, a Russian drone hit one of the most important government buildings in Kyiv – the headquarters of Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU, which is one of the agencies involved in carrying out deep-strike operations inside Russia.
The long-range strikes by Ukraine have hit Russian military facilities, oil refineries and e-commerce hubs, seeking to undermine the Kremlin’s war effort and economy, as well as make ordinary citizens feel the consequences of the war.
The air war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified as troops have struggled to make progress along the 1,250-kilometre (775-mile) front line. Russia has recently been using fast-flying, jet-powered drones, and the recurring wail of air-raid sirens has become part of daily life in Kyiv.
In a social media post on Saturday, Zelensky said that Russia had carried out overnight strikes on Kyiv and Boryspil international airports, and linked the attack to the planned US visit.
“Clearly, these Russian strikes on the airports are a reaction to the discussions and preparations for the possibility of the US side using an aircraft to travel to Ukraine,” he said.
“We have taken note of this Russian move, and next week we will adjust our operation accordingly regarding Russian airspace, which has become dangerous because of our drones and missiles in the sky. Of course, there are and will be no threats to diplomacy from our side.”
Russian attacks killed five people and wounded five more at an industrial facility in Ukraine’s southern Dnipropetrovsk region, local military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said. He described those killed as employees at the site. “A locksmith, an electrician, a plumber and a machinist. People of peaceful professions. They were simply working their shift. They were doing their job when enemy missiles cut off their lives,” he said.
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A 62-year-old man was wounded, and several homes and an apartment building were damaged in a separate attack on the region’s Nikopol district, Hanzha said.
In a statement Saturday, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had carried out strikes on two metallurgical plants in the region, describing them as “major suppliers of metal products for Ukraine’s military production”.
A further two people were wounded in an overnight Russian attack on Ukraine’s Kyiv region, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the regional military administration. In the Boryspil district, a fire sparked by a strike partially destroyed a nine-story residential building.
Russian forces also repeatedly struck a shopping centre in the southern Mykolaiv region with drones overnight, damaging retail premises and sparking fires, Ukraine’s state emergency services said. A 72-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl were hurt.
Emergency crews responding to the incident were repeatedly forced to withdraw to safety because of the threat of further strikes, returning whenever conditions allowed, the emergency services said.
Russia launched ballistic missiles from its Rostov and Voronezh regions and deployed 167 attack drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. The drones included Shahed-type aircraft – around half of them jet-powered – as well as Geran and decoy drones. Ukrainian air defences shot down or suppressed 128 drones, according to the air force.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian attacks wounded three people, including a 14-year-old girl, in Russia’s border region of Belgorod, local officials said.
In a statement, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces had shot down 53 Ukrainian drones overnight.
(the broadcaster with AP and Reuters)
