KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted Sunday (Aug 24) that a meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin remained “the simplest means ahead” as the 2 sides change prisoners and the nation celebrated Independence Day.
Kyiv’s normal mentioned that Ukrainian troops had recaptured three villages in its Donetsk area that had fallen underneath Russian management. And Ukraine launched drone strikes on Russia, triggering a fireplace at a nuclear energy plant.
After a push by US President Donald Trump to dealer a Ukraine-Russia summit, hopes for peace dimmed when Russia on Friday dominated out any rapid Putin-Zelenskyy assembly.
However Zelenskyy mentioned Sunday that the “format of talks between leaders is the simplest means ahead”, renewing requires a bilateral summit with Putin.
Russian Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier accused Western international locations of looking for “a pretext to dam negotiations” and condemned Zelenskyy for “demanding a right away assembly in any respect prices”.
Zelenskyy, talking at a ceremony attended by Western officers together with US envoy Keith Kellogg, whom he awarded with the Ukrainian Order of Benefit, vowed to “to push Russia to peace”.
Additionally Sunday, Ukraine and Russia mentioned that they had every despatched again 146 prisoners of warfare and civilians within the newest of a sequence of swaps that stay one of many few areas of cooperation between the rivals.
Press freedom group Reporters With out Borders (RSF) welcomed the discharge of two Ukrainian journalists, Dmytro Khyliuk and Mark Kaliush, denouncing “their abductions and the abuse they suffered in detention”.
