Ukraine wants Zelenskyy-Putin summit to jolt stalled US-led peace efforts

Russian Emergency Ministry employees work at the side of the damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Syzran in Russia’s Samara region (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP)

Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv’s top diplomat said, presenting a potential summit as a way of injecting new momentum into US-led efforts to end Russia’s more than four-year invasion of its neighbour.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack deep inside Russia struck a residential building, killing a woman and a child, Russian officials said on Wednesday.

Kyiv has asked Turkey to help facilitate top-level talks and has reached out to other capitals as potential hosts, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus.

Ministry employees work at the side of a damaged apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Syzran (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP)

“We are… advocating for a (summit) meeting now to bring new momentum to diplomacy,” Mr Sybiha told reporters on Tuesday.

His remarks were embargoed until Wednesday.

US-mediated talks over the past year between delegations from Moscow and Kyiv have made little or no headway on key issues, such as the future of four Ukrainian regions Moscow is trying to capture but does not fully control.

With Washington’s attention now gripped by the Iran war, the talks are on ice.

Mr Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by US President Donald Trump but Mr Putin has refused.

Mr Putin thinks that time is on his side, that Western military and financial support will fade and that Ukraine’s resistance will eventually collapse, analysts say.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by US President Donald Trump (Peter Dejong/PA)

Meanwhile, a grim war of attrition continues along the about 1,250-kilometre (800-mile) front line that snakes along eastern and southern areas of Ukraine.

Western officials and analysts claim Russia is suffering several tens of thousands of battlefield casualties each month, drawing comparisons to the carnage of the First World War.

Independent verification of battlefield casualties and which side has the upper hand is not possible.

Ukraine has developed a domestic arms industry which is increasingly producing long-range drones and missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia.

It has taken aim at Russia’s oil production and manufacturing plants that supply the Russian military.

In Syzran, a city in Russia’s Samara region that is about 800 kilometres (500 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, a drone attack caused the collapse of a section of a residential building, local authorities said.

With Washington’s attention now gripped by the Iran war, the talks between Ukraine and Russia are on ice (Vahid Salemi/AP)

The bodies of a woman and a child were pulled out from under the rubble and 12 others were injured, local officials said.

Images from the scene showed a part of a four-storey building reduced to a massive pile of rubble, with emergency workers on top of it.

Russian media reports said a Rosneft oil refinery — a frequent target of Ukrainian drone attacks — is located on the same street as the damaged building.

Ukraine’s aerial attacks on Russia increased by nearly four times last year, from 6,200 in 2024 to more than 23,000 in 2025, Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said last month.