Russia raids Ukraine as US aims to end conflict by summer

MOSCOW/KYIV — Russian forces have carried out strikes on Ukrainian military facilities, Moscow said on Saturday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the United States is seeking to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict by June.

"The Americans are proposing that the parties end the war by the beginning of this summer, and they will likely exert pressure on the parties in line with this timetable," Zelensky told reporters.

He suggested that the proposal deadline is linked to the US midterm elections.

Currently, there are four documents that will form the basis of security guarantees for Ukraine after the end of the hostilities, Zelensky said.

He said the documents include a security guarantee agreement between Ukraine and the United States, an agreement on the creation of the Coalition of the Willing, a document on prospects for Ukraine's membership in the European Union, and a short framework document that links the other three.

The deadline follows trilateral talks involving the United States in Abu Dhabi that produced no breakthrough as the warring parties clung to mutually exclusive demands.

A third round of talks aimed at ending the Ukraine conflict should take place "soon", although there is no fixed date yet, the Kremlin said on Friday.

The latest round of talks, between Wednesday and Thursday, resulted in the two agreeing to a major prisoner swap but failed to yield a breakthrough on the thorny issue of territory.

"For two days there was constructive and very difficult work,"Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, a day after the second round of talks ended.

When asked about when the talks would continue, Peskov said:"There is no exact date yet. But it will be soon."

Peskov said Russian and US negotiators discussed future nuclear arms control in the United Arab Emirates on the expiration of the last remaining nuclear arms pact between the two countries and agreed on the need to quickly launch new arms control talks.

The New START treaty expired a day earlier, leaving no caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than half a century and fueling fears of an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

"There is an understanding, and they talked about it in Abu Dhabi, that both parties will take responsible positions and both parties realize the need to start talks on the issue as soon as possible," Peskov said.

Meanwhile, Russia's defense ministry said on Saturday that its forces have carried out a large-scale strike on Ukrainian military facilities, using Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed that Russia launched a major attack on the country's energy infrastructure, the second such strike on Ukraine's energy network in less than a week.

Ukraine's state-run energy company Ukrenergo has imposed emergency power outages across most of the country's regions in the wake of the attacks, Shmyhal said.

Russia also confirmed it has seized control of the settlement of Chuhunivka in Kharkiv region, the ministry said, noting that 158 positions held by Ukraine's armed formations and foreign mercenaries have been neutralized.

Russian air defense systems have shot down one guided aerial bomb and 168 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones, said the ministry.

AGENCIES-XINHUA