KYIV: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US top diplomat Marco Rubio held \u201cfrank\u201d talks on the Ukraine war during a meeting Thursday, both sides said, as Washington hit out at Moscow\u2019s lack of \u201cflexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US secretary of state said Lavrov shared new ideas on resolving the conflict which he promised to present to US President Donald Trump, but played down the prospect of a breakthrough.<\/p>\n
The pair met hours after Moscow pummeled Kyiv for a second straight night and as the United Nations said the number of victims from Russian attacks was at its highest level in three years.<\/p>\n
Trump, who forced the warring countries to open negotiations for the first time in three years, this week accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of talking \u201cbullshit\u201d on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The US leader\u2019s efforts to secure a ceasefire have failed to extract any concessions from the Kremlin, despite multiple calls with Putin.<\/p>\n
Rubio told reporters Lavrov had floated something \u201cnew\u201d on the conflict, but did not give details.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a new approach. It\u2019s a new idea or a new concept that I\u2019ll take back to the president to discuss,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that it was not something that \u201cautomatically leads to peace, but it could potentially open the door to a path.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US diplomat said he had also conveyed Trump\u2019s anger that the more than three-year war, triggered by Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion, was still ongoing, criticizing Moscow\u2019s lack of \u201cflexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the United States would deliver more weapons to Kyiv and that he had \u201cspecific dates\u201d on when they would arrive, in response to an AFP question.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said in an X post that Ukraine was \u201cready\u201d for different approaches to \u201cscale up protection,\u201d including by \u201cpurchasing a large defense package from the United States, jointly with Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump seemed to back up such an agreement. In an interview with American broadcaster NBC late on Thursday, he said NATO was \u201cpaying\u201d the United States for weapons to send to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100 percent… And then NATO is going to be giving those weapons (to Ukraine),\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Trump also said he would make a \u201cmajor statement… on Russia\u201d on Monday.<\/p>\n
NATO secretary general Mark Rutte said he had spoken with Trump and was \u201cworking closely with allies to get Ukraine the help they need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The leaders of Britain and France meanwhile announced they had prepared plans for a peacekeeping force to be deployed to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Ukraine said that two people \u2013 a 22-year-old policewoman on duty at a metro station and a 68-year-old woman \u2013 were killed in the latest assault on the capital.<\/p>\n
Police described Maria Dziumaga as a \u201ckind, cheerful, sincere, responsible, and dedicated police officer\u201d who had joined in 2023.<\/p>\n
AFP journalists heard loud detonations reverberating over Kyiv throughout the night and saw flashes from air defense systems illuminating the sky.<\/p>\n
Resident Karyna Wolf said she could hear the growing buzz of a drone until a large explosion rocked the flats just two floors above in her building.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately jumped away from the wall, away from the windows and ran into the hallway, and in those seconds there was an explosion. There was a lot of glass shards flying at me,\u201d the 25-year-old said.<\/p>\n
As Rubio and Lavrov met in Kuala Lumpur, Zelensky was at a conference in Rome, where he called for more international political and military support.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said Putin wanted \u201cour people to suffer, to flee Ukraine and for homes, schools, for life itself to be destroyed,\u201d urging Western leaders to boost defense investments.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin denied peace talks were stalled and said it was still open to contacts.<\/p>\n
Moscow has for months refused a ceasefire and two rounds of talks with Ukraine have produced no breakthrough.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 415 drones and missiles at the country while Zelensky urged allies to quickly roll out fresh sanctions against Moscow.<\/p>\n
The fresh onslaught came just one night after Russia fired a record 741 long-range drones and missiles.<\/p>\n
Officials said the nighttime attack on Kyiv also wounded 22 people.<\/p>\n
AFP reporters saw firefighters putting out flames in a damaged residential building and people emerging from shelters, carrying sleeping mats and pets after the air alert was lifted.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s defense ministry said the strike targeted \u201cmilitary-industrial enterprises\u201d in Kyiv as well as air bases.<\/p>\n
The UN announced that attacks on Ukrainian cities in June had led to a three-year high in the number of civilians killed or wounded.<\/p>\n
It said it had verified at least 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded during the month \u2014 the highest combined toll since April 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US top diplomat Marco Rubio held \u201cfrank\u201d talks on the Ukraine war during a meeting Thursday, both sides said, as Washington hit out at Moscow\u2019s lack of \u201cflexibility.\u201d The US secretary of state said Lavrov shared new ideas on resolving the conflict which he promised to present to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83593,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83573\/revisions\/83593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}