Zelenskiy says Russia trying to 'wriggle out' of peace talks

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Moscow yesterday (21 August) of shirking a meeting between him and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, despite US-led attempts to arrange a summit to end the war.

US President Donald Trump is trying to end Russia's three-and-a-half year invasion of Ukraine by bringing both Zelenskiy and Putin to the negotiating table.

But despite high-profile talks with Putin in Alaska last week and separate meetings with Zelenskiy and European leaders in Washington on Monday(18 August), there has been little tangible progress towards a peace deal.

Zelenskiy said Russia was "trying to wriggle out of holding a meeting".

"Frankly speaking, the signals coming from Russia are simply outrageous... They don't want to end this war," the Ukrainian leader said during an evening address.

"They continue their massive attacks on Ukraine and their ferocious assaults along the front line," he said.

Zelenskiy has signalled willingness to meet with Putin, but only after his allies agree on security guarantees for Ukraine to deter future Russian attacks once the fighting stops.

He has also said any meeting should take place in a "neutral" European country -- ruling out a summit in Moscow -- and rejected the idea of China helping to guarantee Ukrainian security.

Russia, meanwhile, said that Ukraine did not appear to be interested in "long-term" peace, accusing Kyiv of seeking guarantees incompatible with Moscow's demands.

Trump has set a two-week time frame for assessing the chances of a peace agreement, telling the right-wing media outlet Newsmax that Washington would "have to maybe take a different tack" if the talks fell through.

Fresh Russian barrage
Zelenskiy also warned that both Moscow and Kyiv were preparing for further fighting.

Russia was building up troops on the southern front line, and Ukraine was test-launching a new long-range cruise missile, he said.

His comments came after Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles against Ukraine overnight -- the biggest barrage since mid-July -- killing one person in the western city of Lviv and wounding many others.

Russian missiles also targeted an American-owned factory complex in the town of Mukachevo in western Ukraine, wounding 23 people, the head of the regional military administration said.

The president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, Andy Hunder, said that Moscow aimed to "destroy and humiliate" US businesses in the country.

Zelenskiy called the attack "a deliberate strike specifically on American-owned property".

A later shelling of the city of Kherson killed one person and wounded more than a dozen, a local official said.

And in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine's Donetsk region, two people were killed and at least 21 wounded after Ukrainian shelling, the Russian-installed regional chief, Denis Pushilin, said.

Russia claims advances
On the front lines, Russia said it had captured the village of Oleksandro-Shultyne in the eastern Donetsk region, the latest in a long string of territorial gains.

The village lies less than eight kilometres (five miles) from Kostiantynivka, a fortified town in the Donetsk region that Russia has been pressing towards on both sides.

France condemned the overnight strikes as showing Moscow's "lack of will to seriously engage in peace talks".

A group of allies led by Britain and France are putting together a military coalition to support security guarantees for Ukraine.

Zelenskiy said Kyiv hoped to "have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days", in comments to reporters released for publication on Thursday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of making unrealistic security demands.

Any deployment of European troops to the country would be "absolutely unacceptable", he said, accusing Ukrainian officials of showing no interest in a "sustainable, fair, long-term settlement".

Zelenskiy also announced that Ukraine had successfully tested a long-range cruise missile, known as Flamingo, that can strike targets as far as 3,000 kilometres away and could be in mass production by February.

Russian forces have been slowly but steadily gaining ground in recent months.

Zelenskiy said Russia was building up troops along the front in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims as its own, along with four other Ukrainian regions.