Kyiv:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that he met the American counterpart Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly next week while Russia intensified fatal strikes across his country.
Russia has led one of its largest air attacks, pulling 40 missiles and some 580 drones in Ukraine in a night dam that killed at least three and injured dozens, Zelensky said.
A Ukrainian strike killed four people in the southwest region of Samara in Russia, the local governor said in one of the deadliest Ukrainian strikes since Russia launched his invasion in 2022.
Zelensky said he would discuss security guarantees for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia during talks with Trump in New York.
Ukraine insisted on the security guarantees supported by the West to prevent future Russian attacks. Russian president Vladimir Putin, however, warned that all Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
A push led by the United States for a rapid end of the war blocked and Russia has indeed excluded a meeting of Putin-Zelensky-something which, according to kyiv, is the only means towards peace.
“We expect sanctions if there is no meeting between the leaders or, for example, no cease-fire,” said Zelensky in the comments published by the Ukrainian presidency.
“We are ready for a meeting with Putin. I talked about it. Both bilateral and trilateral. It is not ready,” added Zelensky.
In Russia’s latest air assault, “a missile with cluster ammunition hit an apartment building” in the central city of Dnipro, Zelensky said on social networks.
He published photos of cars and a fire building and rescuers carrying a safe person in the middle of dispersed rubble nearby.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, strikes killed a person and injured at least 30 people, with a man in serious condition, said regional governor Sergiy Lysak.
“Intense” batters
The strikes come one day after three Russian fighter planes violated the airspace of Estonia – a member of NATO on the eastern flank of the Alliance – an allegation refused by Moscow.
But that sparked fears west of a new dangerous provocation of Moscow after Poland last week complained that around 20 Russian drones fly over its territory.
Zelensky repeated the call for “joint solutions” to shoot down drones on Ukraine “with other countries”.
Russia, which has collapsed on Ukrainian territory for months, announced on Saturday that its troops had captured the village of Berezove in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
In the northeast region of Kharkiv, there were “intense actions” in the key field of Kupiansk, said Zelensky, referring to an Ukraine rail center taken up in an offensive in 2022. In Russia, four people were killed “during an enemy drones attack last night”, said the governor of Samara, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev social networks.
He said earlier than “fuel and energy installations” were targeted, without specifying damage.
The Ukrainian general staff said that “the strategic objects of the Russian aggressor had been struck”, adding his forces “inflicted on damage” to the oil refinery of Saratov and struck the oil refinery Novokuybyshevsk in the Samara region.
A source from the SBU security agency in Ukraine said that Ukrainian drone strikes “have stopped operating a number of oil pumping stations in Russia.”
