KYIV, Ukraine — Drone strikes killed one person in Ukraine and another in Russia, officials said Saturday, ahead of new talks next week aimed at ending the war.
An elderly woman died when a Russian drone hit a residential building in the Black Sea port city of Odesa, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
In Russia, a civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the border region of Bryansk, regional Gov. Alexander Bogomaz said.
Russia-installed authorities said a Ukrainian airstrike on a village Saturday wounded 15 people in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
The attacks came a day after a Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian border city of Belgorod killed two people and wounded five, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Meanwhile, another round of U.S.-brokered talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine will take place in Geneva, days ahead of the fourth anniversary of the all-out Russian invasion of its neighbor, officials in Moscow and Kyiv said Friday.
The discussions will be held Tuesday and Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications advisor, Dmytro Lytvyn, confirmed the new round of negotiations.
The talks take place against a backdrop of continued fighting along the roughly 750-mile front line, relentless Russian bombardment of civilian areas of Ukraine and the country’s power grid, and Kyiv’s almost daily long-range drone attacks on war-related assets on Russian soil.
Previous U.S.-led efforts to find consensus on ending the war, most recently two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues such as the future of Ukraine’s Donbas industrial heartland in the east that is largely occupied by Russian forces.
Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Zelensky repeatedly thanked American and European allies for helping Ukraine by providing air defense systems that protect infrastructure such as power plants and “save lives.”
“Russian attacks happen almost every night in Ukraine and at least once a week, massive strikes,” he said, speaking in English. “Without you Americans, Europeans, and everyone who stands with us, it would have been very, very difficult to hold on.”
He reiterated his belief that security guarantees for Ukraine must come before any peace agreement with Russia.
Zelensky said last week that the United States has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal. Previous deadlines given by President Trump have passed largely without consequence.
Kullab and Morton write for the Associated Press and reported from Kyiv and London, respectively.
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