White House says talks ‘constructive’ but Russian negotiators not present; more civilians killed in country’s south-east by Moscow attacks. What we know on day 1,488
Ukrainian and US negotiators trying to secure a peace settlement of Russia’s invasion opened their latest round of talks in Florida on Saturday, with more discussions planned through the weekend. Russian representatives did not attend the meeting. “We continued discussing key issues and the next steps within the negotiation track,” the chief Ukrainian negotiator, Rustem Umerov, posted on X. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met at two sets of US-brokered talks in the United Arab Emirates this year and a round in Geneva last month. Moscow and Kyiv agreed on prisoner exchanges, but no breakthroughs were achieved.
The White House described the latest meeting as “constructive”, with discussions “focused on narrowing and resolving remaining items to move closer to a comprehensive peace agreement”.
Russian attacks killed four people in south-eastern Ukraine and left much of the northern region of Chernihiv without power on Saturday, officials said. Zaporizhzhia governor, Ivan Fedorov, said the morning attack on the city killed a man and a woman, and injured six others, including two children. In the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region, officials said two people died in an area south-east of the main regional centre, Dnipro. Five people were injured in attacks at multiple places. In his nightly video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said power had been cut to parts of Chernihiv region, where efforts were under way to fix damage after a drone strike on an energy facility. Power and water supplies have also been cut to parts of Kyiv.
