European leaders back Zelensky's call for direct Russia talks

"We will not leave and we will not go out from our territory, no we will not give you victory," he said, adding he had reiterated his request to meet Putin face-to-face. Kyiv has been asking its Western allies for more ammunition deliveries for its air defences as Ukraine endures daily Russian strikes.

Zelensky is seeking ways for the allies to further pressure Russia to end the fighting. Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian president wrote on X that he would be meeting with Britain's King Charles III on Monday. Nuclear site targeted On Sunday, Russia fired waves of drones and other munitions at Ukraine, with one of the attacks damaging a nuclear storage facility near the Chernobyl disaster site, Ukrainian officials said.

Radiation levels at the facility remained within normal limits following the attack, although its fuel reception building was "partially destroyed", according to Ukraine's nuclear energy operator, Energoatom. Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months, as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war remain stalled and sidetracked by the conflict in the Middle East.

Zelensky, in an earlier online post, said Russia had used an Iranian-designed Shahed drone to "hit one of the buildings of the Centralised Spent Fuel Storage Facility" in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.

One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. "As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia's brazenness, which long ago went off the charts," he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was dispatching a team to inspect the damage, calling the incident "deeply concerning". The facility is located in a remote area of forest around a dozen kilometres (seven miles) from the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and is designed to house spent fuel from Ukraine's three active nuclear plants.

Deadly strikes Both sides accused each other of renewed attacks on civilians Sunday. A Russian bombardment of a public transport stop in Ukraine's southern Zaporizhzhia region left at least two people dead, while a nearby drone strike killed a 56-year-old minibus driver, authorities said.

Separate Russian attacks on the central Dnipropetrovsk region killed two men, governor Oleksandr Ganzha posted on Telegram. Read morePutin rules out Zelensky's offer to meet and vows to pursue war goals In Russia, a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in the Belgorod border region killed a woman and injured her husband, local authorities said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia now occupies around a fifth of its neighbour: the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk – collectively referred to as the Donbas – and large parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

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[Los Angeles Times] Starmer hosts Zelensky, Macron and Merz; Russian strikes hit nuclear site, kill 3 in Ukraine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted Sunday that Europe must play a key role in any negotiations to end the war with Russia as he arrived for talks in London with staunch European allies in the wake of a Russian drone strike that killed three people.

" Ahead of the meeting hosted by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Zelensky said the talks would focus on further efforts to help Ukraine's war effort, including air defense. “Europe must be part of the negotiations and must be strong,” he said on X.

Also present at the meeting at 10 Downing St. were French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Macron and Merz left after a couple of hours of discussions, leaving Starmer to continue talks with Zelensky. The U.K., France and Germany — the so-called E3 group of European nations — have been prominent backers of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The U.K. and France lead the “coalition of the willing” initiative to provide security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a peace process. The meeting comes in the wake of a Russian drone strike that killed three people waiting at a bus stop in southeastern Ukraine.

Another person was wounded in the drone attack in Balabyne in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on his Telegram channel. A separate drone strike damaged a storage center for spent nuclear fuel in the Kyiv region, just nine miles from the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s General Staff said.

The attack sparked a fire that was extinguished within an hour. Radiation remains within safe levels, officials said. The International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said the incident was “deeply concerning” due to the large amounts of nuclear material held at the facility.

He said in a statement that the agency would visit the site of the attack soon. Elsewhere, a Ukrainian attack killed one man and injured a woman in Russia’s Kursk region, local Gov. Alexander Khinshtein said. The Russian attacks follow a large-scale Ukrainian drone attack Saturday that targeted St.

Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, illustrating Kyiv’s growing ability to hit deep inside Russia. With the front line barely moving as swarms of drones hinder advances, both sides have sought an edge by launching long-range strikes. The war that followed Russia’s invasion of its neighbor is more than four years old, with no end in sight.

The St. Petersburg attack, which came less than 24 hours after the end of the city’s flagship economic forum headed by President Vladimir Putin, was a blow to his efforts to cast the conflict as a distant event that doesn’t affect Russian daily life.

Pylas writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, contributed to this report.

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[@AFP] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy arrives in Britain for defence talks with leaders of the U... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy arrives in Britain for defence talks with leaders of the UK, France and Germany after new Russian strikes killed five people and hit a nuclear site in Ukraine.