Moscow: A senior Russian negotiator said Russia hopes to make “some progress” in peace talks with Ukraine at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Monday.
Moscow rejected a joint Ukraine proposal for an unconditional ceasefire of 30 days, but instead proposed to stop an air strike on energy facilities.
Despite this proposal, the two sides continued to launch an air attack as negotiations progressed.
Russia’s strike against the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed a family of three late Friday, sparking anger among Ukrainian officials.
U.S. negotiators will meet separately from Ukrainian and Russian delegations on Monday, amid a case where U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg is considered a “shuttle diplomacy” between hotel rooms.
Despite diplomacy and pressure from President Donald Trump, the breakthrough to date is elusive.
Russian Senator Grigory Karasin, who will lead the Russian delegation, told Zvezda TV Channel: “We hope to make at least some progress.”
He said he and negotiator FSB adviser Sergey Beseda will take a “aggressive and constructive” approach to negotiations.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP a day ago that Kiev hopes to reach a consensus on a partial ceasefire “at least” to cover attacks on energy, infrastructure and seas. Kyiv dispatched its defense minister for negotiations.
“We are striving for at least one problem with a mindset,” Karasin told the Russian Defense Ministry owned Zvezda.
He said they will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday and will return on Tuesday.
Drone barrage
Negotiators who chose negotiators raised questions. Neither is a traditional diplomatic decision-making body, such as the Kremlin, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Defense.
Karasin is a professional diplomat who now sits in the House of Parliament in Russia, while Beseda is a longtime FSB official and now an advisor to the Director of the Security Services Agency.
The 2014 FSB acknowledged Beseda was in Kyiv during the bloody crackdown in the Ukrainian capital during the country’s pro-EU revolution.
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Ukraine accused Russia of not really seeking peace and condemning its ongoing attacks, he had ordered his troops to stop targeting Ukrainian energy sites.
Instead, Putin, the White House envoy Steve Witkoff, met in Moscow last week, was a “great” leader trying to end the clash with Keeff, who said he met Putin in Moscow.
“I thought he was directly with me,” Witkoff told Tucker Carlson, the host of the U.S. Right-Wing Podcast, in an interview on Friday, that he told Tucker Carlson, the host of the U.S. Right-Wing Podcast, in an interview aired on Friday, that he said: “I thought he was directly with me.”
“I don’t think Putin is a bad guy. That’s a complicated situation, that war and all the elements that lead to the situation,” Trump’s envoy said.
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Saturday that Russia drove 179 drones to Ukraine in the latest all-night barrage.
In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, the entire family, including a 14-year-old girl, was killed when a drone crashed into the house late Friday, the region authorities said.
AFP photographer at the strike site saw rescuers screening the ruins of a destroyed building as smoke and mist hang in the night sky.
According to the local governor, in the eastern Donetsk region, a Russian strike killed at least two people and injured three people.
Ukraine also attacked Russia overnight, injured two people in the southern city of Rostov-on.
Meanwhile, Zelensky said he had visited combat troops to defend the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk, which Russia had been trying to surround and occupy for months.
