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While Trump’s team met with Ukrainian officials in Florida, Russia launched one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine in months
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President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the “next steps” for talks with the United States about post-war Ukraine have been agreed.
In a post to social media platform X on Saturday afternoon, Mr Zelensky said that he had had a call with president Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to catch-up about the third day of talks.
He will now wait for his Ukrainian negotiators, Rustem Umerov and General Hnatov, to return from Florida so they can work on “ideas and proposals”.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Zelensky slammed Russia’s huge overnight drone attack on the country as “meaningless from a military point of view”, saying: “Russia’s aim is to inflict suffering on millions of Ukrainians”.
He said more than 650 drones and 51 missiles were used in the wide-spread bombardment, with energy facilities the main targets.
Ukraine’s air force said that they shot down and neutralised 585 drones and 30 missiles, adding that 29 locations were struck.
British soldiers joined a major exercise on Nato’s snowy border with Russia as Finnish troops prepare to defend their country if their neighbour invades.
Around 50 men from the 3 Rifles, based in Edinburgh, spent six weeks training in the Arctic north of Finland, where they honed their survival skills in temperatures as low as minus 28C.
The C Company soldiers, who have previously had hot weather training in Kenya and Morocco, learned how to cope with icy immersion in water and how to avoid frostbite, and practised fighting in the snow and shooting while skiing.
They then joined the 3,000 conscripts, reservists and regulars from the Finnish Army’s Kainuu Brigade on Operation Northern Ax, in the forests of Vuosanka, around 20 miles from Russia and 400 miles north of Helsinki.
The British reconnaissance specialists carried out operations alongside the Finns on a wide-ranging and sophisticated simulated battle which lasted for five days and nights.
The operation was designed to test their defence, delaying, night combat and attack tactics, with commanders following the troops’ movement in real time to monitor their performance.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Czech president Petr Pavel says Vladimir Putin’s attempts to grab land from Ukraine echo Adolf Hitler’s actions against neighbouring countries – including Czechoslovakia – that preceded the Second World War.
Pavel says Putin’s argument that he is acting in the interests of Russian-speaking people living in eastern Ukraine is particularly alarming to those familiar with Czech history.
“For Czechoslovakia, the German minority [in the Sudetenland] was used as a pretext,” Pavel said. “The same narrative is used by Vladimir Putin.”
He said Europe and the US’s appeasement of Russia represents a failure to stand up for Western values.
“What we are doing now, I wouldn’t call it a betrayal of Ukraine,” he said. “I would call it reluctance – reluctance to protect the principles we all claim to protect.
“If we allow Russia to come out of this conflict as a victor, we have all lost.”
Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine has “evolved since it was first presented”, a Cabinet minister has argued.
It comes ahead of talks between Sir Keir Starmer, Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz in Downing Street tomorrow.
Asked whether the prime minister would be able to tell the US president that the plan doesn’t work for Ukraine, Pat McFadden told Sky News: “I think that 28-point proposal has evolved since it was first presented. And the European leaders have played a role in that, as of course, has the Ukrainian leadership itself.
“So there are a lot of points to be discussed, but the principle will be the same, which is to let Ukraine decide its own future here, and not to reward Russian aggression, both in terms of the end state on the battlefield, but perhaps even more importantly, in terms of Russia’s ability to dictate Ukraine’s future.”
Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed the progress made at peace talks with US officials in Florida, saying the “next steps and the format” of further discussions had been agreed.
But with few new developments otherwise announced by either side, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US Olga Stefanishyna admitted that “difficult issues remain”.
Stefanishyna told CNN that “both sides continue working to shape realistic and acceptable solutions”.
“The main challenges at this stage concern questions of territory and guarantees, and we are actively seeking optimal formats for addressing them,” she said.
“More details will be provided once all information is compiled.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the “next steps” for talks with the US about post-war Ukraine have been agreed.
Zelensky joined his negotiators for a “very substantive and constructive” call with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner during the third day of meetings in Florida.
“Ukraine is committed to continuing to work honestly with the American side to bring about real peace,” Zelensky said on Telegram.
He added that parties agreed “on the next steps and the format of the talks with America”.
Bulgarian maritime authorities have launched efforts to evacuate the crew of the oil tanker Kairos stranded off the Black Sea port of Ahtopol and believed to be part of the “ shadow fleet ” used by Russia to evade international sanctions linked to its war in Ukraine.
Last week, the Gambian-flagged 274-meter Kairos caught fire after an alleged attack with Ukrainian naval drones in the Black Sea near the Turkish coast. It was sailing empty from Egypt toward the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
The 149,000-tonne Kairos, formerly flagged as Panamanian, Greek and Liberian, was built in 2002. It was sanctioned by the EU in July this year, followed by the UK and Switzerland.
French president Emmanuel Macron condemned Russia’s latest missile and drone attack on Ukraine, claiming that Russia was escalating the war instead of seeking peace.
“Russia is locking itself into an escalatory path and is not seeking peace. I firmly condemn the massive strikes that targeted Ukraine last night, particularly its energy and railway infrastructure,” he wrote on X.
“We must continue to exert pressure on Russia to compel it to choose peace,” he added, ahead of his London visit.
“Ukraine can count on our unwavering support. This is the very purpose of the efforts we have undertaken within the Coalition of the Willing.
“We will continue these efforts with the Americans to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, without which no robust and lasting peace will be possible.
“For what is at stake in Ukraine is also the security of Europe as a whole.”
Russia’s air defences destroyed 77 Ukrainian drones launched overnight, the defence ministry said this morning, as both sides continue cross-border air attacks in the nearly four-year-old war.
The drones were downed over seven regions in southern and central Russia and over Russian-annexed Crimea, the ministry said in a statement on Telegram.
A power transmission tower was damaged in the Rostov region bordering Ukraine about 1,000km south of Moscow, leaving about 250 residents without electricity, Rostov Governor Yuri Slyusar said on Telegram, adding that no one was injured.
About 42 drones were destroyed over the Saratov region in southwestern Russia and 12 over the Rostov region, the defence ministry said.
Russian authorities rarely disclose the extent of damage from Ukrainian air attacks and almost never confirm hits on military infrastructure.
The war has increasingly featured long-range drone and missile strikes far from the front lines, as each side seeks to hit military, logistics and energy assets deep in the other’s territory.
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