Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for beginning talks with Kyiv.
“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin told reporters, after saying that Russian forces were advancing toward achieving their main goals in Ukraine. He also said he was ready to meet with Trump.
“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion. Soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises,” Putin said.
Last month, media reports said that Putin was open to discussing a ceasefire deal with Trump but that he ruled out making any major territorial concessions and required that Kyiv give up its aims to join NATO. Putin said Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Kyiv.
Addressing a summit of European leaders in Brussels on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed European countries to provide guarantees to protect Ukraine after the war concludes. He also said that support would not be sufficient without support from the United States under Trump.
Suspect in general’s killing
Later Thursday, a court in Moscow ordered the suspect in the killing of top Russian General Igor Kirillov, who was chief of Russia's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops, to be sent to pretrial detention for two months, the court said on Telegram.
Akhmad Kurbanov, a native of Uzbekistan, was charged with an act of terrorism resulting in the death of a person, according to a notice on the court’s website.
Russia said Wednesday it had detained a suspect who confessed to planting and detonating a bomb that killed the general on instructions of Ukraine’s SBU Security service.
Latest attacks
A Russian missile attack killed three people and wounded three others in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region on Thursday, the national police said.
And in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, a Russian missile struck and badly damaged a two-story residence, injuring five people, officials said.
Russia also carried out a mass cyberattack on Ukrainian state registries, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna said late Thursday.
"Today the largest external cyber attack in recent times occurred with Ukraine's state registries," Stefanishyna wrote on Facebook. "As a result of this targeted attack, the work of the unified and state registries, which are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, was temporarily suspended."
Stefanishyna said it was evident the attack was "carried out by the Russians to disrupt the work of the country's critically important infrastructure." Work was underway to restore the systems, she added.
Ukraine launched six U.S.-made long-range ATACMs missiles and four U.K.-made Storm Shadow missiles at Russia’s Rostov region on Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday.
Officials in Russia's Rostov region reported a fire Thursday at an oil refinery after a wave of attacks from several dozen Ukrainian aerial drones.
Rostov acting Governor Yuri Slyusar said on Telegram that the fire happened at the Novoshakhtinsk refinery and was later extinguished. Slyusar reported one person was injured in the attack.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Thursday that it had destroyed 36 Ukrainian drones over Rostov, part of a total of 84 drones it shot down, mostly over regions bordering Ukraine.
The ministry said the other intercepts took place over Bryansk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Tambov and Krasnodar.
Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram that Ukrainian drone attacks had damaged several residential buildings.
Ukraine's military said Thursday that its air defenses had shot down 45 of 85 Russian drones used in overnight attacks targeting the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava and Sumy regions.
The military also said Russian missiles damaged residential buildings and municipal property in Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy.
Some information for this story came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
