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President optimistic about security guarantees as at least six people injured in Russian attacks
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Ukrainian drones have struck an oil depot that is a key Russian logistics hub for fuel, Kyiv’s domestic security service says.
Officials said the attack in the city of Rybinsk sparked a large fire.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky says Kyiv is discussing the possibility of hosting US troops as part of peace talks with US president Donald Trump.
Mr Zelensky said a troop presence in his country would be a major security boost.
“Of course, we are discussing this with President Trump and with representatives of the [Western] coalition [supporting Kyiv]. We want this. We would like this. This would be a strong position of the security guarantees,” he said in a WhatsApp chat with the media.
Russian attacks on Ukraine continued overnight, wounding at least six people in air strikes on the Odesa region. Three children and a 42-year-old man were injured. More than 170,000 people have been left without power, according to Ukraine’s energy ministry.
Mr Zelensky said he was ready to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin “in any format”.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine was “10 per cent” away from a deal to end the war with Russia, but cautioned that the last remaining issues were the most important.
In his New Year’s Eve address, Zelensky said his country wanted an end to the war but not at “any cost”, and that any agreement needed strong security guarantees to deter Russia from invading again.
“The peace agreement is 90 per cent ready. Ten per cent remains. And that is far more than just numbers,” Zelensky said in the address, posted on his Telegram account.
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President Zelensky would gain more in diplomatic goodwill from the White House by signing a deal – any deal – than he would lose in Ukrainian security, and he should accept the US guarantee – and press his more loyal allies in Europe to take on the role of the real guarantors of Ukraine’s borders.
Video footage presented by Russia as evidence of an alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence earlier this week was laughable, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s foreign ministry has said.
Russia’s defence ministry released video footage on Wednesday of what it said was a downed drone.
It showed a Russian serviceman standing next to fragments of a device said to be a downed Ukrainian Chaklun-V drone carrying a 6kg explosive device that had not detonated.
The ministry did not explain how it knew what the device’s target was.
Heorhii Tykhyi, of Kyiv’s foreign ministry, told Reuters: “This is laughable – both the fact that it took them two days to produce this, and the fact that the things they try to present as evidence basically shows that they are not serious even about fabricating the story.”
“We are absolutely confident that no such attack took place.”
More than 2,300 Ukrainian civilians were killed and more than 11,000 were injured from January to November this year, according to the United Nations.
That was 26 per cent higher than in the same period in 2024 and 70 per cent higher than in 2023, it said.
Moscow has this year escalated its long-range attacks on urban areas of Ukraine. In recent months, as Russia’s invasion of its neighbour approaches its four-year milestone in February, it has also intensified its targeting of energy infrastructure, seeking to deny Ukrainians heat and running water in the bitter winter months.
Russia launched more than 100,000 drones, around 60,000 guided aerial bombs, and about 2,400 missiles at Ukraine this year, according to Ukrainian statistics.
Air raid alerts sounded 19,033 times across the country in the year.
The data comes from the Air Force of Ukraine and United24, which is the Ukrainian government’s official fundraising platform.
The Russian leader is trying to navigate between keeping Donald Trump on board as a de facto partner in geopolitics, while frustrating his ambitions to be a peacemaker worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize by ending the world’s worst war, writes Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford:
By The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley:
President Donald Trump’s advisers have held talks today with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and national security advisers from the UK, France and Germany to discuss the next steps in ending Russia’s war, US special envoy Steve Witkoff says.
“We focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of @POTUS’ peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,” Mr Witkoff wrote in a social media post.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov also participated.
Mr Zelensky said on Tuesday that national security advisers from Kyiv’s “coalition of the willing” backers would meet in Ukraine on Saturday, and then country leaders would gather in France on Tuesday, 6 January.
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