The Ukrainian foreign minister, Andriy Sybiga, hit out at Vladimir Putin after the Russian president said peace talks with Volodymr Zelenskyy should take place in Moscow. Sybiga said at least seven countries were ready to host a meeting: Austria, the Vatican, Switzerland, Turkey and three Gulf States. “These are serious proposals, and President Zelenskyy is ready for such a meeting at any time,” Sybiga said. “Putin continues to mess around with everyone by making knowingly unacceptable proposals.”
Putin capped off a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday with his demand that any direct peace talks between him and Zelenskyy take place in Moscow. A trip to Moscow would be considered not only a symbolic capitulation but also a grave risk to the safety of Ukraine’s president, whom Russia has tried to assassinate since the outset of the full-scale war.
Putin was in China meeting with its leader, Xi Jinping; the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un; and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. North Korea has sent troops and ammunition to Russia, while China and India have bought Russian oil, helping its war economy, and China has been documented as a supplier to Russia of goods for use in the war.
“Russia is not acting alone. China provides Russia with up to 80% of dual use imports,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief. Dual-use goods refers to seemingly civilian components and materials that end up being used in weapons, very often with the supplier’s full knowledge. “This allows the killing to continue in Ukraine,” Kallas told an audience in Brussels on Wednesday.
Russia fired more than 500 drones and two dozen missiles at Ukraine, authorities said on Wednesday, as Ukraine’s president and European leaders pressed on with their initiatives to end the war. The main Russian night-time targets were civilian infrastructure, especially energy facilities, said Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The attacks targeted mainly western and central Ukraine and wounded at least five people, the Ukrainian air force said.
Russian shelling and drones killed nine people and wounded seven more in Kostyantynivka, said Vadym Filashkin, head of the Donetsk region’s military administration. “In the morning, the Russians shelled the city with artillery – eight people aged 44 to 74 were killed … In addition, the enemy twice hit civilian cars with FPV drones. As a result of these attacks, a 36-year-old woman died.”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, greeted Zelenskyy in Paris on Wednesday evening, ahead of a Thursday meeting of European countries assessing what kind of postwar security guarantees they can provide, potentially in conjunction with the US. Macron said defence ministers of these countries on Wednesday confirmed and documented contributions from 35 coalition members. Zelenskyy is also scheduled to speak with Donald Trump on Thursday, according to the Associated Press, which attributed the information to an unnamed White House official.
The Russian and Ukrainian militaries once again gave conflicting accounts after Russia claimed to have captured “about half” of the city of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. As has become its practice the Russian defence ministry sought to prove this with a drone video showing a soldier holding a Russian flag standing on a road. Ukraine’s 10th army corps described it as staged propaganda and released a video of its own that it said showed a Russian unit being destroyed.
Ukraine’s reliable Deepstate war blog assessed that the flag waving occurred on the southern outskirts of Kupiansk where control is disputed. In a late evening report, the Ukrainian general staff said an armed clash was under way in the Kupiansk sector, while there were nearly 50 attempts by Russian forces to break through Ukrainian defences near Pokrovsk.
Donald Trump told reporters at the White House: “I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand and he’ll make a decision one way or another. Whatever his decision is, we’ll either be happy about it or unhappy about it and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen,” he said. Trump did not explain what he meant.
Putin said on Wednesday that he believed “that if common sense prevails, it is possible to agree on an acceptable option for ending the conflict … It seems to me that there is a certain light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s see how the situation develops. If not, then we will have to achieve our goal by military means.”
