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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that he spoke with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for “nearly an hour” about how to end the war with Russia.
“It was a truly good conversation: we went into many details; there are good ideas, which we discussed,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram app. “We have some new ideas in terms of formats, meetings, and, of course, timing on how to bring a real peace deal closer.”
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian defence minister Rusten Umerov will continue discussions with the U.S. team later Thursday, adding there is still work to be done on “sensitive issues” and the weeks ahead may be “intensive.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, said Thursday that Russia sees “slow but steady progress” in peace talks with the U.S. on Ukraine.
Zakharova said Western European powers were trying to torpedo the progress and suggested that the U.S. counter such moves.
Ukraine strikes Russian oil and gas facilities
Ukrainian military and security officials said on Thursday that Ukraine launched British Storm Shadow missiles and its domestically produced long-range drones to hit several Russian oil and gas facilities.
Ukraine has previously used the British-made missiles to attack Russian industrial targets that it says help Moscow’s war.
The Ukrainian General Staff said that the air force used Storm Shadow cruise missiles to strike the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.
“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” the General Staff said on Telegram Thursday.
It said the refinery was one of the biggest oil product suppliers in southern Russia and was supplying diesel and jet fuel to the Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s SBU security service said the locally made long-range drones hit oil product tanks in the Russian port of Temryuk in the Krasnodar region and a gas processing plant in Orenburg in southwestern Russia.
The Orenburg gas processing plant, the largest facility of its kind in the world, is located about 1,400 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laid out a 20-point peace plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. broadly hammered out recently. Zelenskyy conceded he would be open to making the Donetsk region a demilitarized, free economic zone monitored by international forces.
In the Krasnodar region, Russian regional authorities said that two oil product tanks caught fire at the southern port of Temryuk after the drone attack.
Flames covered an area of about 2,000 square metres, authorities at the Krasnodar operational headquarters said on Telegram.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine approaches its four-year mark and diplomatic efforts to end it have so far failed to produce any tangible results, both Kyiv and Moscow have stepped up their drone and missile attacks on energy facilities.
Kyiv has increased its strikes on Russia’s oil refineries and other energy infrastructure since August as it seeks to cut Moscow’s oil revenues, a key source of funding for its war effort.
