A meeting between Russian and US officials on a partial ceasefire in Ukraine ended after 12 hours of negotiations in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Russian state media reported, with a joint statement expected the following day. With Ukrainian negotiators waiting nearby, a day after they sat down with the US team, the Americans and Russians met in Riyadh with a Black Sea ceasefire top of the agenda. President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks will pave the way for a breakthrough.
While the talks took place at a luxury hotel in the Saudi capital, nearly 90 people including 17 children were wounded in a missile attack on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. The attack on a "densely populated residential area" damaged apartments and an educational facility, the regional prosecutor's office said. The city's acting mayor earlier said a hospital had been affected.
The Ukrainian negotiating team was expecting a second meeting with the US delegation on Monday, a source in Kyiv told AFP, a sign that progress may have been made. Russia's state-run TASS news agency cited a source as saying that the meeting with the US had ended after "more than 12 hours of consultations" and that a joint statement on results would be published Tuesday. At a previous round of talks this month in Jeddah -- days after Zelensky's White House dressing-down by Trump -- Kyiv agreed to a US-proposed 30-day ceasefire that was su.
