Russian strikes kill 4 as US and Ukraine officials wrap up third day of diplomatic talks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Russian missile, drone and shelling attacks overnight and Sunday killed at least four people in Ukraine, after U.S. and Ukrainian officials wrapped up a third day of talks aimed at ending the war.

A man was killed in a drone attack on Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region Saturday night, local officials said, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine’s biggest oil refineries and is an industrial hub.

Kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.

Three people were killed and 10 others wounded Sunday in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.

The latest round of attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday evening he had a “substantive phone call” with American officials engaged in talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. He said he had been given an update over the phone by U.S. and Ukrainian officials at the talks.

“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

Speaking Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, U.S. President Donald Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 meters.”

He said a deal depended on the two outstanding issues of “terrain, primarily the Donbas,” and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Russia controls most of Donbas, its name for Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk, which, along with two southern regions, it illegally annexed three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.

Kellogg, who is due to leave his post in January, was not present at the talks in Florida.

Separately, officials said the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany would participate in a meeting with Zelenskyy in London on Monday.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy. In comments published Sunday by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, he said the strategy was “encouraging.”

“There are statements there against confrontation and in favor of dialogue and building good relations,” he said.

The document released Friday by the White House makes clear that the U.S. wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core U.S. interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

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