Zelensky urges pressure on Russia to end war

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday urged pressure on Russia to end the three-year war as his top aides visited Paris for talks with US and European officials on the conflict.

At least 12 people were reported killed and dozens wounded Thursday as Russia pounded Ukraine with drone strikes and shells. “Russia uses every day and every night to kill. We must put pressure on the killers... to end this war and guarantee a lasting peace,” Zelensky said in a Telegram post.

Zelensky´s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said he had arrived in Paris with Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga and Defence Minister Rustem Umerov for talks with US, British, German and French officials -- without saying with whom. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Keith Kellogg, President Donald Trump´s special envoy to Ukraine, are meeting French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday about crafting a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The meeting comes after a spate of deadly Russian air strikes on Ukrainian cities that has triggered outrage in Kyiv and Europe. Zelensky´s office said his team in Paris will discuss “bringing peace to Ukraine”.

“Among other things, the parties will discuss ways to implement a full and unconditional ceasefire, the deployment of a multinational military contingent to ensure security, and the further development of Ukraine´s security architecture,” Ukraine´s presidency said in a statement. The Kremlin dismissed the talks and accused Kyiv´s allies of wanting to drag out the war.

“Unfortunately we see from Europeans a focus on continuing the war,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, when asked about what he expected from the talks. Russia launched a “massive” drone salvo overnight on the city of Dnipro that killed three and wounded more then 30, local governor Sergiy Lysak said.

Fires broke out at apartment blocks in the city after the attack. Two more were killed in artillery strikes in Nikopol, down south from Dnipro, Lysak added, while local officials also reported fatalities in the frontline areas in the Donetsk and Kherson regions. In Kherson, an ambulance crew was hit by a drone while transporting a patient, wounding the driver, police said.

Russia´s army also claimed to have captured a small village in the eastern Donetsk region, where its troops have been grinding forward for months.Zelensky said that he had “information” China was supplying weapons to Russia, amid an escalating row between Kyiv and Beijing over China´s support for Moscow.

Zelensky said last Wednesday that Kyiv knew of at least 155 Chinese nationals deployed to assist Moscow´s invasion, a day after claiming the Ukrainian army had captured two Chinese soldiers in the eastern Donetsk region.