WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy held talks with U.S. President Joe Biden and with the leaders of Turkey and France on Sunday, an increase in diplomatic activity around the war started by Russia that is dragging into a 10th month.
"We are constantly working with partners," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, adding that he expects some "important results" next week from a series of international events that will tackle the situation in Ukraine.
While Zelenskiy has held numerous talks with Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan since Russian forces invaded in late February, the accumulation of discussions in just one day is not a regular event.
Zelenskiy said he had thanked Biden for "unprecedented defence and financial" help the United States has provided for Ukraine and talked with the U.S. president about an effective anti-aircraft defence systems to protect the population.
Earlier, Zelenskiy said that he held "a very meaningful" conversation with Macron on "defence, energy, economy, diplomacy" that lasted more than an hour and "very specific" talks with Erdogan on assuring Ukraine's grain exports.
Turkey, which acted as a mediator in peace talks in the early months of the war, also worked alongside the United Nations in a grain deal, which opened up Ukrainian ports for exports in July after a six-month de facto Russian blockade.
Erdogan's office said the Turkish leader had a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday, in which he had called for a quick end to the conflict.
Putin said last week that Moscow's near-total loss of trust in the West would make an eventual settlement over Ukraine much harder to reach and warned of a protracted war.
Macron has championed diplomacy in the conflict but his mixed messages that it was up to Kyiv to decide when to negotiate with Moscow, but also that security guarantees were needed for Russia, have unnerved some Western allies, Kyiv and the Baltic countries.
There are no peace talks and no end in sight to the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, which Moscow calls a "special military operation" and Ukraine and its allies an unprovoked act of aggression.
Moscow shows no signs of being ready to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and pre-war borders, saying the four regions it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in September are part of Russia "forever." The government in Kyiv has ruled out conceding any land to Russia in return for peace.
On the ground in Ukraine, the entire eastern front line has been continuously shelled with heavy fighting taking place. Moscow is also targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure with waves of missile and drone strikes, at times cutting off electricity for millions of civilians in winter, when mean temperatures can be several degrees below zero Celsius.
** Emergency crews were working to ease power shortages in many parts of Ukraine after Russian attacks, particularly the Black Sea port of Odesa, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday.
"At this time, it has become possible to partially restore supplies in Odesa and other cities and districts in the region," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
"We are doing everything to reach the maximum number possible in the conditions that developed after the Russian strikes."
Russian forces used Iranian-made drones to hit two energy plants in Odesa on Saturday, knocking out power to about 1.5 million customers - virtually all non-critical infrastructure in and around the port.
Zelenskiy said Odesa was "among the regions with the most frequent power outages".
Other areas experiencing "very difficult" conditions with power supplies included the capital Kyiv and Kyiv region and four regions in western Ukraine and Dnipropetrovsk region in the centre of the country.
The work on restoring electricity for the general population was constant, Zelenskiy said.
Since October, Russia has been targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure with large waves of missile and drone strikes.
** A senior official in eastern Ukraine said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces had attacked a hotel where members of Russia's private Wagner military group were based, killing many of them.
The account in a television interview by Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, could not be verified by Reuters.
Gaidai, interviewed by Ukrainian television, said forces launched a strike on Saturday on a hotel in the town of Kadiivka, west of the region's main centre of Luhansk. Photos posted on Telegram channels showed a building largely reduced to rubble.
"They had a little pop there, just where Wagner headquarters was located. "A huge number of those who were there died."
Russia's defense ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Gaidai did not give casualty figures, but he said those surviving faced inadequate medical services to treat them.
"I am sure that at least 50% of those who managed to survive will die before they get medical care," he said. "This is because even in our Luhansk region, they have stolen equipment."
Some Ukrainian media quoted local officials as saying the hotel had been closed for some time.
The Wagner group is a private military contractor with close ties to the Kremlin. Its forces are known to be fighting in parts of Ukraine and have also been deployed in a number of African countries.
Gaidai has previously reported strikes by Ukrainian forces on other targets in Luhansk region, including on a Wagner headquarters in the town of Popasna in August.
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
The US has not explicitly encouraged Ukraine to hit targets deep within Russia, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Sunday.
His comments were apparently a response to Aleksey Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, who claimed on Saturday that Kiev does not rule out strikes inside Russia.
Asked by the ABC anchor whether he thought Ukrainian drones should be striking “airfields deep inside Russia,” Kirby first stated that he would “let the Ukrainian Armed Forces speak for their operations.”
He then clarified that “We are certainly not encouraging or enabling Ukrainian operations inside Russia. We are trying to make sure they can defend their territory, win back their ground in Ukraine.”
“From the very beginning, Martha, we’ve talked about monitoring and being mindful of the risks of escalation of this war because it’s not only not good for the Ukrainian people, it’s not good for our interests, and it’s not good for the Russian people,” Kirby concluded.
The official had previously referenced Washington’s latest $275 million military aid package to Ukraine, which includes missiles for the HIMARS system, artillery shells, air defense components, and other armaments.
Announced on Friday, the package brings the total amount of military aid supplied by the Biden administration to Ukraine to approximately $20 billion, with $19.3 billion of that awarded since the start of Russia’s military operation in February.
Following an attack by Ukraine earlier this month on two Russian airbases hundreds of kilometers from the Ukrainian border, Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the US had “neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.”
However, Friday’s Times report suggested that while “Washington does not want to be seen publicly giving the green light” to its Eastern European ally, the Pentagon is not telling the Ukrainians not to strike the Russians on their own territory, instead merely insisting they heed international law and the Geneva convention – rules that a growing volume of evidence suggests they have already broken.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has previously warned the US that providing Kiev with long-range weapons to attack Russia would cross a “red line” and potentially make Washington “a direct party to the conflict.”
** Russia is boosting the production of the most powerful weapons, including based on new physical principles, for countering Western countries that support Kiev’s regime, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel Sunday.
"Our enemy is entrenched <…> in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and a whole number of other places that have sworn allegiance to today’s Nazis. That is why we are boosting the production of the most powerful means of destruction, including those based on new principles," he said.
The commentary is addressed to Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Aleksey Danilov who said on Saturday that Kiev’s enemy was on the territory from the adjoined Donbass republics to Vladivostok.
Reuters/RT/TASS
