Kyiv says talks with Washington ‘started very constructively’

The Ukrainian presidency’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Tuesday that discussions with the US delegation in the Saudi port city of Jeddah had begun positively. 

“The meeting with the US team started very constructively, we continue our work,” Yermak, who was attending the most senior meeting with US officials since a dramatic fallout at the White House last month, said on social media. 

Ukraine wants peace and is ready to negotiate to end the war, a top advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday as he entered talks with US counterparts in Saudi Arabia.

“We are ready to do everything to achieve peace,” Ukrainian presidency chief of staff Andriy Yermak told reporters.

The Kremlin on Tuesday condemned Ukraine for launching drone attacks on residential buildings, hours after a massive attack on the Moscow suburbs.

“The Kyiv regime is hitting social facilities and residential buildings,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state media, also hailing Russia’s air defences as having worked “very well” to repel the attack, in which two people were killed.

Ukrainian and US officials began talks Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, an AFP journalist reported, where Ukraine is expected to present the United States with a plan for a partial ceasefire with Russia.

An AFP journalist at the scene reported that the talks had begun, while the Ukrainian foreign ministry posted on social media that “a meeting of Ukrainian and American delegations begins in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”