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Ukraine’s emergency service said on Saturday that a Russian missile attack on port infrastructure in Odessa, southern Ukraine, killed eight people and injured 27. kremlin The envoys were scheduled to travel to Florida to negotiate a U.S.-proposed plan to end the nearly four-year war.
The discussions are part of the Trump administration’s months-long effort for peace that also included meetings with Ukrainian and European officials in Berlin earlier this week. Ukraine’s chief negotiator said late Friday that his delegation had completed separate meetings with American and European partners in the United States.
Meanwhile, EU leaders agreed on Friday to provide Ukraine with massive interest-free loans for the next two years to meet its military and economic needs.
Some of those injured in Odessa were on a bus at the center of the strike late Friday, the emergency service said in a Telegram post. Trucks caught fire in the parking lot and cars were also damaged.
Oleh Kipper, head of the Odessa region, said the port was attacked with ballistic missiles.
moscow Reports of the attack were not immediately acknowledged. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the previous day, it had attacked energy facilities and suppliers, as well as unspecified “transportation and storage infrastructure” used by the Ukrainian armed forces. KyivWar effort.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones attacked a Russian oil rig, the military patrol ship Okhotnik and other facilities, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Saturday. It said the ship was patrolling near an oil and gas production platform in the Caspian Sea. It said the extent of the damage was still being clarified.
The drilling platform at the Filanovsky oil and gas field was also affected. The facility is operated by Russian oil giant Lukoil. Ukrainian drones also attacked a radar system in the Krasnosilske region of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
There was no immediate comment from the Russian government or Lukoil. The company is one of two Russian oil majors – along with state-owned Gazprom – targeted by recent US sanctions, aimed at depriving Moscow of the oil export revenues that help sustain its war.
Kiev has used similar arguments to justify months of long-range attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, funding and directly fueling the Kremlin’s all-out offensive, which is soon to enter its fifth year.
Trump’s peace efforts will continue on Saturday also
us President donald trump Has launched a broad diplomatic effort to end the war, but his efforts have faced sharply conflicting demands from Moscow and Kiev.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently signaled he is following through on his maximalist demands on Ukraine, as Moscow’s forces advance on the battlefield despite heavy losses.
On Friday Putin expressed confidence that the Kremlin would achieve its goals militarily if Kiev does not agree to Russia’s terms in peace talks.
EU leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with 90 billion euros ($106 billion) to meet its military and economic needs over the next two years, although they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to use frozen Russian assets to raise funds. Instead, they were borrowed from the capital markets.
After nearly four years of war, the International Monetary Fund estimates Ukraine will need 137 billion euros ($161 billion) in 2026 and 2027. The government in Kiev is on the verge of bankruptcy, and is in desperate need of money by spring.
Meanwhile, Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, is scheduled to meet Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Miami on Saturday, according to a US official. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the meeting that has not yet been publicly announced.
Witkoff and Kushner will sit down with Dmitriev after meeting with Ukrainian and European officials in Berlin to negotiate U.S. security guarantees for Kiev, territorial concessions and other aspects of the U.S.-written plan, the official said.
Ukraine’s chief negotiator Rustam Umerov said late Friday that a Ukrainian delegation had met with American and European partners in the United States, giving few details but saying they agreed to continue “joint work in the near future.”
Asked about the meeting in Miami, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Moscow was preparing contacts with the United States to learn about the outcomes of the meeting in Berlin, but did not provide details.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Ilya Novikov in Kiev, Ukraine contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine