KYIV, Feb 8: A Russian airstrike on a residential area in eastern Ukraine killed one person and wounded two, officials said on Sunday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the US has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a peace deal.
The attack on the city of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region caused a fire in a nine-story apartment block, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
Russia also struck energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Poltava region overnight into Sunday, Serhii Koretskyi, chief executive of Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz, said.
Russia has hammered Ukraine’s power grid, especially in winter, throughout the nearly 4-year-old war. It aims to weaken the Ukrainian will to resist in a strategy that Kyiv officials call “weaponising winter.”
Zelenskyy told reporters Friday the US has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach a deal to end the war. If the June deadline is not met, the Trump administration will likely put pressure on both sides, he added.
“The Americans are proposing the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer and will probably put pressure on the parties precisely according to this schedule,” Zelenskyy said.
“And they say that they want to do everything by June. And they will do everything to end the war. And they want a clear schedule of all events.”
He said the US proposed holding the next round of trilateral talks next week in their country for the first time, likely in Miami. “We confirmed our participation,” he added.
The latest deadline follows US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi that produced no breakthrough as the sides cling to mutually exclusive demands. Russia is pressing Ukraine to withdraw from the Donbas, where fighting remains intense – a condition Kyiv says it will never accept. (AP)
