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Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council Rustem Umerov in Kyiv on Jan. 3.TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/AFP/Getty Images
Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov said on Sunday that talks with U.S. officials on a resolution of the nearly four-year-old war with Russia would continue at the World Economic Forum opening this week in the Swiss resort of Davos. Umerov, writing on Telegram, said two days of talks in Florida with a U.S. team including envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, had focused on security guarantees and a postwar recovery plan for Ukraine.
He gave no indication whether any agreements had been achieved at the meeting.
“We agreed to continue work at the team level during the next phase of consultations in Davos,” Umerov wrote.
The two sides, in the latest of a series of meetings intended to work out the details of an agreement, had “discussed in depth” the two issues, “focusing on practical mechanisms and carrying out and implementing them,” Umerov said. He said his delegation had reported on Russian strikes last week which badly damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and left hundreds of apartment buildings with no heating or electricity.
Over 200,000 homes in Russian-occupied Ukraine without power after drone strikes, local official says
President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was important to outline the dire effects of the Russian strikes as they demonstrated that Russia was not interested in diplomacy.
“If the Russians were seriously interested in ending the war, they would have focused on diplomacy,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
He said Ukrainian intelligence had determined that Russia was conducting reconnaissance on key sites in preparation for strikes, including targets linked to Ukraine’s nuclear power stations.
Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday that there was evidence Russia was considering attacks on power substations supplying nuclear power stations.
Russia has made no comment on the allegations.
