Russian Strikes Kill At Least Four Amid Ongoing Diplomacy
Russian missile, drone and artillery strikes overnight and into Sunday killed at least four people across Ukraine, officials said, even as U.S. and Ukrainian delegations wrapped up a third day of talks in Florida aimed at finding a diplomatic path to end the war.
Chernihiv and Kremenchuk Hit: Local authorities said a man was killed late Saturday in a drone strike in Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine. In the central city of Kremenchuk, a combined missile-and-drone attack damaged infrastructure and caused power and water outages. Kremenchuk hosts one of Ukraine’s largest oil refineries and remains an important industrial hub.
Kharkiv Casualties: Shelling by Russian forces in the Kharkiv region on Sunday killed three people and wounded 10 others, the regional prosecutor’s office reported.
Ukrainian leaders and Western partners accuse Russia of deliberately targeting the country’s power network to deprive civilians of heat, light and running water ahead of a fourth winter of war — a tactic Kyiv calls "weaponizing" the cold.
Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media after receiving a substantive briefing by phone from U.S. officials involved in the talks.
At the Reagan National Defense Forum, U.S. outgoing Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said negotiators were "in the last 10 meters" toward a deal, but he stressed that the talks still hinge on two major unresolved issues: control of territory, particularly the Donbas, and arrangements to ensure the safety and power supply for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia controls most of the Donbas — Moscow’s name for Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk — areas that, along with two southern regions, were illegally annexed by Russia three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, now out of service and located in territory long under Russian control, still requires reliable electricity to cool its six shut-down reactors and stored fuel and thus avoid the risk of a catastrophic incident.
Kellogg, who is scheduled to leave his post in January, was not present at the Florida negotiations. Separately, officials said leaders from the United Kingdom, France and Germany planned to meet with President Zelenskyy in London on Monday to coordinate positions.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the new U.S. national security strategy and described parts of it as encouraging, saying the document emphasized dialogue and efforts to rebuild relations. The White House strategy, released Friday, signals a U.S. interest in restoring strategic stability with Russia and frames ending the war in Ukraine as a core U.S. objective toward that end.
