Photograph: Maksym Kishka/Reuters
Work is under way on the military component of security guarantees for Ukraine that European leaders and Donald Trump have committed to if there is a peace deal. A small group of military leaders held discussions in Washington to work out options, a western official told Reuters on Wednesday, shortly after a bigger virtual meeting wrapped up. Gen Dan Caine, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, held the talks, which also involved around half a dozen other Nato defence chiefs. The chair of the Nato military committee, Adm Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, called it a “great, candid discussion … Priority continues to be a just, credible and durable peace”.
As the “coalition of the willing” began to take on a preliminary shape, Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukraine was also working on a plan with its allies on how to proceed “in case the Russian side continues to prolong the war and disrupt agreements on bilateral and trilateral formats of leaders’ meetings”. Yermak said: “Our teams, above all the military, have already begun active work on the military component of security guarantees.”
Russia, meanwhile, continued to display its apparent intention to delay a possible meeting between Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, writes Pjotr Sauer. Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, complained on Wednesday that Moscow should be included in any talks on Ukraine’s security guarantees: “To discuss security guarantees seriously without Russia is a road to nowhere.” Russia gave Ukraine a supposed “security guarantee” under the Budapest memorandum of 1994, which Putin has long since comprehensively violated by attacking Ukraine.
Lavrov avoided any direct reference to a possible Putin-Zelenskyy summit and said China, Russia’s ally in the war, should be among Ukraine’s security guarantors. Kyiv is likely to view that with deep scepticism, given that Russia uses equipment and materials from China to attack Ukraine, and that the two countries have vowed to pursue a “no-limits” partnership.
Analysts suggested Putin would probably only meet Zelenskyy to accept a complete Ukrainian capitulation. Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said: “He has repeatedly stated that such a meeting would only be possible if there were well-prepared grounds, which in practice means Zelenskyy’s acceptance of Russia’s terms for ending the war.”
Drones attacked Kyiv over Wednesday night into Thursday morning as the Ukrainian air force issued a national alert for missile attacks after Russian warplanes took off. Earlier on Wednesday, at least three people were killed in a Russian artillery attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka, local officials said. Another four were wounded. The governor, Vadym Filashkin, said it involved eight strikes from a multiple rocket launch system and targeted a local market. At least 14 people, including a family with three children, were wounded in a Russian attack on Ukraine’s northern region of Sumy.
A “massive drone strike” on the southern Ukrainian region of Odesa injured one person and caused a large fire at a fuel and energy facility, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Wednesday. Ukrainian drone forces, meanwhile, scored a major hit on the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, where fires and explosions were captured on video.
A Russian military drone exploded in Polish farmland, also on Wednesday, blowing the windows out of houses and igniting a furious response from authorities. “Once again, we are facing a provocation from the Russian Federation, with a Russian drone,” said Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the Polish defence minister. The explosion was in a cornfield near the village of Osiny, about 100km (60 miles) from Warsaw and near the borders with Ukraine and Russian-allied Belarus. Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, condemned “a new violation of our airspace from the east … The foreign ministry will protest to the perpetrator of this violation.”
It was believed to be a Russian drone type called Gerbera, which is often used as a decoy in attacks against Ukraine. Poland’s Gen Dariusz Malinowski said the aircraft “was a decoy drone, which was not armed but carried a self-destruct warhead”. Russian drones and missiles have crossed into the airspace of Nato members Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania several times in the three and a half years since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. The latest incident comes less than a month after a Russian military drone flew into Lithuania from Belarus.
