Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine cannot win its war against Russia without US support and accused Moscow of trying to sabotage peace talks after the Kremlin said it had foiled a Ukrainian drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence. Zelenskyy described the claim as “typical Russian lies” after his two-hour meeting on Sunday with Donald Trump in Florida, Luke Harding and Sammy Gecsoyler report. The Ukrainian president said Russia was “at it again” and using “dangerous statements” to undermine “diplomatic efforts” with the US to end the conflict. He added: “This alleged ‘residence strike’ story is a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russia’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.”
Zelenskyy later said his Sunday meeting with Trump was productive. “Can we win without American support? No,” Zelenskyy told Fox News, before laying out the difficulties that would be posed by a lack of US backing. He also said: “I don’t trust Putin and he doesn’t want success for Ukraine.”
Vladimir Putin has told his army to press on with a campaign to take full control of the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine after a Russian commander said Moscow’s forces were 15km (9.3 miles) from its biggest city. Col-Gen Mikhail Teplinsky told the Russian president at a televised meeting with top military officials at the Kremlin on Monday – a day after Putin spoke with Trump about Ukraine – that Russian forces were getting closer to the city of Zaporizhzhia. Moscow controls about 75% of Ukraine’s wider Zaporizhzhia province, one of four Putin annexed in 2022 in a move denounced by Kyiv and the west as illegal. Gen Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, earlier told Putin that Moscow’s forces were advancing along nearly the entire frontline, while Kyiv’s forces were focused on defence and attempting to counterattack. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified.
Russia’s foreign minister said the west must understand that Russia holds the strategic initiative in Ukraine as discussions move forward on a possible settlement. Sergei Lavrov told state news agency RIA that Kyiv and western countries had to come to terms with the fact that Russia held the initiative on the battlefield as the fourth anniversary of its 2022 invasion approaches. “Our principled position remains unchanged. The strategic initiative rests wholly with the Russian army and the west understands this.” Ukraine and the west, Lavrov said, had to take account of the realities on the ground.
Power line repairs near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have been successfully completed, the International Atomic Energy Agency cited its director general, Rafael Grossi, as saying on Monday. An IAEA team was monitoring repairs near the plant after a local ceasefire brokered by the agency began, with the work expected to last several days.
A historic theatre in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol has opened its doors more than three years after it was destroyed in a Russian airstrike that killed hundreds of civilians sheltering inside. Moscow-installed authorities marked the rebuilding of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre with a gala concert on the building’s new main stage Sunday night. The original theatre was destroyed when it was targeted by a Russian airstrike in 2022 as Moscow’s forces besieged the city. Mariupol’s Ukrainian city council, which left the city when it was occupied for Ukrainian-controlled territory, called the rebuilding and the opening of the theatre “singing and dancing on bones”.
