KYIV: Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine in nighttime attacks, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, in its smallest drone bombardment this year as the warring countries prepare for possible peace talks in Turkey.
\nThe Kremlin hasn\u2019t directly responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s challenge for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to meet him in person at the negotiations in Istanbul on Thursday.
\nKremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused for the second straight day Tuesday to tell reporters whether Putin will travel to Istanbul and who else will represent Russia at the potential talks. \u201cAs soon as the president considers it necessary, we will make an announcement,\u201d Peskov said.
\nRussia has said it will send a delegation to Istanbul without preconditions.
\nThe U.S. has been applying stiff pressure on both sides to come to the table since President Donald Trump came to power in January with a promise to end the war.
\nMilitary analysts say both sides are preparing a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield, where a war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said Monday that Russia is \u201cquickly replenishing front-line units with new recruits to maintain the battlefield initiative.\u201d
\nZelenskyy will not be meeting with any Russian officials in Istanbul other than Putin, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Tuesday on a YouTube show run by prominent Russian journalists in exile.
\nLower-level talks would amount to simply \u201cdragging out\u201d any peace process, Podolyak said. European leaders have recently accused Putin of dragging his feet in peace efforts while he attempts to press his bigger army\u2019s battlefield initiative and capture more Ukrainian land.
\nRussia effectively rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire demanded by Ukraine and Western European leaders from Monday, when it fired more than 100 drones at Ukraine. Putin instead offered direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday.
\nRussia shunned the ceasefire proposal tabled by the U.S. and European leaders but offered direct talks with Ukraine.
\nPutin has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, especially Zelenskyy himself, saying his term expired last year. Under Ukraine\u2019s constitution, it is illegal for the country to hold national elections while it\u2019s under martial law, as it now is.
\nIn a further complication, a Ukrainian decree from 2022 rules out negotiations with Putin.
\nU.S.\u202fSecretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Monday with the top diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland, who were meeting in London, to assess \u201cthe way forward for a ceasefire and path to peace in Ukraine,\u201d spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
\nThose European countries had pledged further sanctions on Russia if it didn\u2019t comply with a full ceasefire that Ukraine had accepted from Monday, but they made no announcement of additional punitive measures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV: Russia launched 10 Shahed and decoy drones at Ukraine in nighttime attacks, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, in its smallest drone bombardment this year as the warring countries prepare for possible peace talks in Turkey. The Kremlin hasn\u2019t directly responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s challenge for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-478067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n