Latest news with #Russia Ukraine conflict
Free Malaysia Today
6 days ago
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Moscow, Kyiv trade deadly attacks
Russia's strikes on Ukraine killed one person in the central city of Dnipro. (Ukrainian emergency service/AP pic) KYIV : Russia and Ukraine traded another wave of drone strikes overnight, both sides said today, in attacks that killed and wounded people on either side of the frontline. Moscow has carried out nightly drone and missile barrages on Ukraine since launching its invasion in February 2022, with Kyiv responding with increasingly long-range strikes inside Russia as well as its own attacks on border areas. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected calls for a ceasefire and escalated his army's strikes, defying US President Donald Trump's pledge of fresh weapons for Ukraine and harsh sanctions if a peace deal is not struck soon. Russia's defence ministry said its air defences shot down 122 drones overnight, most of them in border regions. In Russia's Belgorod border region, 'a woman was killed when an explosive device was dropped from a drone onto a private house', governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram. He said three civilians had been killed a day earlier. And in the Voronezh region, which also borders Ukraine, three teens were wounded when falling drone debris struck a building, regional governor Alexander Gusev wrote on Telegram. Russia's strikes on Ukraine killed one person in the central city of Dnipro, governor Sergiy Lysak said. Russia launched 64 drones, mostly targeting the central Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Dnipro, according to Ukraine's air force. It said it had shot down or disabled 41 of them. That was far down on recent nights, where hundreds of self-exploding attack drones have been fired at the country. Ukraine also said three people were killed and at least 27 wounded in a Russian airstrike on the frontline town of Dobropillia a day earlier.
Russia Today
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Istanbul talks format ‘exhausted itself'
The format of direct peace negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul has 'practically exhausted itself' due to Russia's 'maximalist' demands, Ukrainian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislitsa has claimed. Russia and Ukraine have met for two rounds of direct negotiations in Türkiye this year, restarting talks that Kiev unilaterally abandoned in 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal for the ongoing US-backed talks is to demand Kiev's surrender in the conflict, Kislitsa said in an interview with the Kiev Independent published on Friday. 'Putin's mandate is to force capitulation. Their logic is the opposite of ours,' he said, arguing that the Russian position was worse than 'maximalist.' 'Our mandate had three points: first, ceasefire,' Kislitsa said. The second was to 'create the conditions' for a meeting between Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, and the third included 'confidence-building measures' such as humanitarian issues such as prisoner swaps, he added. Putin has not refused such a meeting, but has argued that currently any final peace agreements signed by Zelensky would be illegitimate given that his presidential term expired in May 2024. Kislitsa insisted that a direct meeting between the leaders is necessary due to the 'complexity' and 'depth' of the conflict. He also argued that Moscow aims to 'bureaucratize' the talks. 'We saw this before in the endless Minsk process groups,' the diplomat claimed. 'Endless meetings – but there were no results.' The failed Western-backed 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements were ostensibly meant to freeze the conflict between Ukraine and the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Both former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande later admitted that the accords were a mechanism to stall for time and allow Kiev to rearm. Moscow has refused Ukrainian demands for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, arguing that such a truce would be a repeat of the Minsk Agreements. Russia has maintained that any settlement needs to be permanent, legally foolproof, and it must address the core causes of the conflict. The Kremlin has also condemned French and British initiatives to deploy peacekeeping troops and fighter jets to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, blasting them as 'militaristic.'
