Ukraine will ‘keep working in good faith’ to achieve peace, says Zelenskyy

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine will work ‘in good faith’ to achieve peace (Peter Morrison/AP)

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he had a “substantive phone call” with American officials engaged in talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida aimed at ending the nearly four-year war.

The Ukrainian president said on Saturday he had been given an update over the phone by US and Ukrainian officials at the talks, which have entered a third day.

“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Mr Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

However following Friday’s talks, the two sides had offered the sober assessment that any “real progress towards any agreement” ultimately will depend “on Russia’s readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace”.

Mr Zelenskyy’s comments came after Russia unleashed a major barrage against Ukraine, using 653 drones and 51 missiles in the wide-reaching attack overnight into Saturday.

It triggered air raid alerts across the country and came as Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day, the country’s air force said.

Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralised 585 drones and 30 missiles, the air force said, adding that 29 locations were struck.

Mr Zelenskyy said energy facilities were the main targets of the attacks, also noting a drone strike had “burned down” the train station in the city of Fastiv, in the Kyiv region.

At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, Ukrainian minister of internal affairs Ihor Klymenko said. Among these, at least three people were injured in the Kyiv region.

Drone sightings were reported as far west as Ukraine’s Lviv region.

Russia carried out a “massive missile-drone attack” on power stations and other energy infrastructure in several Ukrainian regions, Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, wrote on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all off-site power, the International Atomic Energy Agency said, citing its director-general Rafael Mariano Grossi.

The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shut-down reactors and spent fuel to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.

Meanwhile, Russia’s ministry of defence said its air defences had shot down 116 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight.