AGENCIES

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday ahead of talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia that Ukraine wants peace and Russia is the “only reason” that the war has dragged on.

“Ukraine has been striving for peace since the very first second of the war, and we have always said that the only reason that the war is continuing is because of Russia,” Zelensky said on social media.

Zelensky arrived in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia.

Kyiv will propose an aerial and naval ceasefire with Russia during talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia, a Ukrainian official told AFP.

Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict will see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelensky’s disastrous White House visit last month.

Zelensky said he would meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday [today] with the American team”.

At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has said Washington wants “to get down a framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire as well”.

Meanwhile, Russia said yesterday it was expelling two British “diplomats” on suspicion of carrying out espionage activities.

Announcing the expulsion of the embassy’s second secretary and husband of the first secretary, Russia’s FSB security service said “counterintelligence work had revealed an undeclared British intelligence presence under the cover of the national embassy.”

It said the two “deliberately provided false information when obtaining a permit to enter our country, thus violating Russian legislation.”

On the war front, Russian forces advanced further in Kursk region yesterday and curled behind Ukrainian forces as part of a major encirclement operation aimed at forcing thousands of Ukrainian soldiers to either flee or surrender in western Russia, reports Reuters.