RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine can’t reclaim lost territory – Rubio

Ukraine will not be able to reclaim its 2014 borders from Russia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has publicly stated he will never recognize the lost territories, including Crimea, as Russian. The peninsula voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in 2014, shortly after the US-backed armed coup in Kiev. Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions held their own referendums in 2022 to become part of Russia.

Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg told Fox News that Kiev has expressed a willingness to cede land de facto, if not de jure, as part of a peace deal.

“Ukraine can’t push the Russians all the way back to where they were in 2014,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday.

After months of US-brokered peace efforts, Washington has a pretty clear idea of what both sides want, the top US diplomat noted.

“We kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop,” he said, adding that Moscow’s and Kiev’s settlement demands are still “far apart.” 

“It’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the President is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this,” Rubio said.

Both Trump and Rubio have previously warned that the US could walk away from being a peace broker in the Ukraine conflict, if there is no progress soon.

“Not that a war in Ukraine is not important, but I would say what’s happening with China is more important,” Rubio said, adding that Iran is another US concern.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that its peace terms include Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization and denazification, as well as for Kiev to give up its ambitions to join NATO. Also, ceding the new Russian regions of Kherson, Zaporozhye and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics is not up for discussion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last year. Should Kiev abandon plans to join the US-led military bloc and withdraw its troops from the four new territories, Moscow is ready to institute an immediate ceasefire, he added.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian drones hit apartment block in Ukraine's Kharkiv, 46 hurt

Russia launched a mass drone attack late on Friday in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, hitting a high-rise apartment block, triggering fires and injuring 46 people, officials said.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said there had been strikes in 12 locations in four central districts of the city, a repeated target of Russian air attacks lying 30 km (19 miles) from the country's northeastern border.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced the drone strikes, which hit Ukrainian cities several times a week. He said dozens of drones had been launched and Ukraine's allies were moving too slowly in helping beef up its air defence capability.

"There were no military targets, nor could there be any. Russia strikes dwellings when Ukrainians are in their homes, when they are putting their children to bed," Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.

"As the world delays decisions, almost every night in Ukraine turns into a horror that results in the loss of lives. Ukraine needs stronger air defences. Stronger and real decisions from our partners: the United States, Europe, all our partners who seek peace."

Terekhov said a house had also been hit. An 11-year-old child was among the injured. Eight of those hurt were being treated in hospital.

Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said emergency crews were working through the night to tackle the aftermath of the attack despite fears of repeat strikes.

Pictures posted online showed firefighters battling flames, charred building facades with smashed windows and cars aflame in streets littered with rubble.

Regional authorities said four people were also injured in a Russian joint drone and artillery attack on localities east of Nikopol in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.

In southern Kherson region, a village resident died when a fallen drone detonated as he was trying to carry it away from a house.

Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, though many thousands have been killed since it launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022.

Russia's Defence Ministry, meanwhile, reported that its air defence units had destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones in an hour: eight over the border region of Bryansk and two over Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Yuri Slyusar, acting governor of Rostov region, on Ukraine's eastern border, said air defence units had destroyed Ukrainian drones over five districts. Falling fragments had damaged some homes, he said, but there were no casualties.

RT/Reuters