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Top envoys abandon plans to travel to London after Volodymyr Zelensky publicly rejects US proposal to hand Ukrainian territory to Putin
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A high-level peace summit in London to discuss the terms of a Ukraine peace deal has been abruptly downgraded after key figures dropped out of the meeting.
Foreign ministers from France and Germany have abandoned plans to travel to the UK for the talks after US secretary of state Marco Rubio announced he would not attend, citing “scheduling issues”.
The ministerial summit will be replaced by talks among more junior officials from each country, Sky News reported. And while Ukraine‘s foreign minister is still due to be in London, he and David Lammy will instead hold bilateral talks.
It comes after Volodymyr Zelensky publicly rejected a US proposal that would effectively allow Vladimir Putin to keep almost all the Ukrainian territory he has seized during the war so far. Russia had offered to halt its invasion on these terms.
Mr Zelensky said of the proposal: “There is nothing to talk about – it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people.”
Russia launched a “massive” drone attack on the central Ukrainian city of Poltava overnight, injuring at least six people, the emergency service said in a post on Telegram.
“Solely the city’s civilian infrastructure was under enemy attacks,” the emergency service said.
Several fires broke out and residential buildings, enterprises, warehouses, and garages were damaged, the emergency service said, posting photos of firefighters battling flames at night.
Two people were also injured in a Russian drone attack on civilian infrastructure in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa, which also sparked several fires, governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
And large-scale fires broke out as a result of a Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, its mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Air defence units were engaged in repelling attacks on the Kyiv region, but there were no reports of potential damage.
The Trump administration has been actively dismantling a series of measures designed to hold Russia and its allies responsible for alleged war crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine.
One of the most significant steps taken by the administration was its decision to pull out of an international task force led by the European Union, established to respond to Russia’s breaches of international law, reported the Washington Post.
This group had been formed to coordinate accountability for crimes linked to Moscow’s military actions in Ukraine.
In addition to the withdrawal, the White House has scaled back the role of the US Justice Department’s War Crimes Accountability Team. The team, which had focused on investigating and building cases against individuals involved in war crimes, has seen its operations significantly reduced.
Further, the administration has dismantled a programme that was designed to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs who were sanctioned in response to the war.
This initiative had aimed to target the financial networks of individuals close to the Kremlin.Congressman Jason Crow criticised the administration’s actions, stressing the importance of a robust approach to accountability.
“The atrocities coordinator position is … tasked with holding Putin responsible for the crimes he’s committed against the Ukrainian people,” Mr Crow told The Post.
“This position was created by Congress on a bipartisan basis, and the administration must empower whoever serves in this position to carry out their duties as required by law.”
The dismantling of these mechanisms has raised concern among lawmakers and human rights advocates who view the moves as undermining international efforts to seek justice for victims of the conflict in Ukraine.
A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets early on Wednesday, killing nine people in a wave of attacks that targeted civilian infrastructure in east, south and central Ukraine, officials said.
The full scale of the attacks, which kept Kyiv and the eastern half of Ukraine awake for several hours overnight, was not immediately known.
Serhiy Lysak, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which includes Marhanets, in central-southern Ukraine, said nine people were killed in the attack, with at least 30 injured.
The strikes came as both Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky have signalled that they would be willing to negotiate a pact that would ban striking civilian infrastructure.
If bilateral talks occur, it would be the first time the two sides had held direct negotiations since the early days of the war, which Russia began with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
David Lammy will no longer host a crucial peace summit in London today after the US secretary of state Marco Rubio pulled out, it has been reported, while their counterparts from France, Germany and Ukraine are now also not expected to attend.
The downgraded meeting will now take place among senior officials of the five nations, while David Lammy will hold bilateral talks instead.
Mr Rubio said he had told Mr Lammy he was dropping out of the meeting late on Tuesday and offered to travel to the UK at a later date instead.
The breakdown of the ministerial summit came after Volodymyr Zelensky sharply pushed back against a US proposal for a peace deal that would see Ukraine effectively give up large swathes of its territory.
Russia’s drone attack on the city of Marhanets in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region killed seven people and injured six others, the regional governor said on social media this morning.
Volodymyr Zelensky said in a Telegram post that his earlier offer of a ceasefire covering civilian sites still stands.
“Russia needs to be seriously prepared to talk about this,” Mr Zelensky said.
“There are no obstacles on the Ukrainian side, and there will be none.”
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said there are no plans for talks on the proposal. He said Moscow is prepared to consider such a step, but noted that reaching an agreement could take time.
“While talking about civilian infrastructure, it’s necessary to clearly define when such facilities can be a military target and when they can’t,” he said.
“If a military meeting is held there, is it a civilian facility? It is. But is it a military target? Yes, it is. There are some nuances here that need to be discussed.”
Odesa came under a “massive attack” by Russian drones overnight, wounding at least three people, the head of the regional administration Oleh Kiper wrote on his Telegram page.
A residential building in a densely populated urban area, civilian infrastructure and an educational facility were among the targets hit, he said.
Later on Tuesday, Russia hit the southern city of Zaporizhzhia with two aerial glide bombs – a retrofitted Soviet weapon that for months has been used to lay waste to eastern Ukraine.
The attack killed a 69-year-old woman and wounded 24 people, including four children, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff was expected to visit Moscow again this week.
Mr Ushakov provided no further details.
Western analysts say Moscow is in no rush to conclude peace talks, because it has battlefield momentum and wants to capture more Ukrainian land.
Russia has effectively rejected a US proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting by demanding its own far-reaching conditions.
US and European allies will join their UK and Ukraine counterparts in London for the latest peace talks on the war-torn nation’s conflict with Russia.
Wednesday’s gathering comes as Donald Trump’s administration continues to drive efforts to find peace between Russia and Ukraine.
The US president has suggested he is hopeful the warring parties “will make a deal this week”.
But Kyiv could be forced to swallow a bitter pill under terms being ironed out between the US and Russia, according to the Financial Times.
Vladimir Putin has offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine across its current front lines, the newspaper reported.
What are the ideas floated by the US to end the war? Read here:
Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine’s delegation heading to the UK for peace talks has a mandate to discuss only an unconditional or partial ceasefire with Russia.
“We are also ready to commit that after a ceasefire, we’re prepared to sit down for talks in any format,” he told reporters.
Mr Zelensky added that Ukraine would only believe Russia is serious about peace once it shows results.
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Ukraine-Russia war latest: London peace summit abruptly downgraded after Trump’s top envoys drop out – The Independent
