Russian drones struck a house in central Ukraine, killing a 12-year-old boy, officials said, while long-range Ukrainian strikes reportedly targeted a Russian port and an oil refinery as US peace efforts continued out of public view. US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were set to meet Thursday in Miami with a Ukrainian delegation but there was no official confirmation whether the meeting took place.
Those scheduled talks came after discussions between President Vladimir Putin and the US envoys at the Kremlin on Tuesday. Previous diplomatic attempts to break the deadlock have come to nothing and the nearly four-year war has continued unabated. Officials largely have kept a lid on how the latest talks are going, though Trump’s initial 28-point plan was leaked. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s delegation in Miami wanted to hear from the US side about the talks at the Kremlin.
Zelenskyy, as well as European leaders backing him, have repeatedly accused Putin of stalling in peace talks while the Russian army tries to press forward with its invasion. Zelenskyy said in a video address late Thursday that officials wanted to know “what other pretexts Putin has come up with to drag out the war and to pressure Ukraine.” Meanwhile, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, who accompanied Putin on a visit to India on Friday, repeated the Russian leaders’ recent criticism of Europe’s stance on the peace talks.
Kyiv’s European allies are concerned about possible Russian aggression beyond Ukraine. Kyiv’s allies in Europe are “constantly putting forward demands that are unacceptable to Moscow,” Ushakov told Russia’s state-owned Zvezda TV. “Putting it mildly, the Europeans don’t help Washington and Moscow reach a settlement on the Ukrainian issues.”
