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Russia kept up its attacks on Ukraine ahead of the new talks, firing at least 140 drones and four ballistic missiles at the country between late Sunday and early Monday, the Ukrainian air force said.
A Russian drone attack on a five-storey apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv just before dawn killed at least seven people, including a one-and-a-half-year-old girl, authorities said.
Zelenskyy called the strikes an attempt to “humiliate diplomatic efforts.”
Ukrainian shelling attacks in the Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson and Donetsk regions meanwhile killed two people, Moscow-installed authorities said.
TERRITORIES AT STAKE
Russia currently occupies a fifth of Ukraine.
It annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum denounced as a sham by Kyiv and the West, and did the same in 2022 in four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia – even though its forces have not fully captured them.
Russia controls Crimea and is largely in control of the Lugansk region, but not the other three regions.
Russia has suggested it might “freeze” the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in exchange for getting control of land not already captured in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was “inclined to support” this proposal.
But Zelenskyy has repeatedly shot down the notion of ceding territory to Moscow, and says he is constitutionally bound not to give away Crimea.
Yevgeniy Sosnovsky, a photographer from the captured Ukrainian city of Mariupol, said he “cannot understand” how Ukraine would cede land already under its control.
“Ukraine cannot give up any territories, not even those occupied by Russia,” he told AFP.
