UKRAINE - Ukraine's president has questioned Russia's commitment to progressing peace talks after Moscow confirmed it was sending a team to talks in Istanbul on Monday.
Russia is yet to send its negotiating proposals to Ukraine - a key demand by Kyiv. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow's conditions for a ceasefire would be discussed in Turkey. But Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of "doing everything it can to ensure the next possible meeting is fruitless". "For a meeting to be meaningful, its agenda must be clear, and the negotiations must be properly prepared," he said. Ukraine had sent its proposals to Russia, reaffirming "readiness for a full and unconditional ceasefire".
The first round of talks two weeks ago in Istanbul brought no breakthrough, but achieved a prisoner of war swap. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia currently controls about 20 percent of Ukraine's territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014. As the talks approached, both Russia and Ukraine reported explosions on Friday night and Saturday morning. In Ukraine's Kherson region, three people were killed and 10 more were injured, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region's military administration. On social media, he said that the "Russian military hit critical and social infrastructure" as well as "residential areas of settlements in the region". One person was also killed in the Sumy region, the administration there said. Officials said at least one person had also been injured in explosions in the cities of Kharkiv and Izyum. Meanwhile, at least 14 people were injured in an explosion in Russia's Kursk region, according to the acting local governor Alexander Khinshtein and Russia's state-owned news agency, TASS. (BBC)