Ahead of the peace summit in Switzerland, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said Putin’s comments were intended as a distraction
We are restarting our rolling coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Much of the focus will be around the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland, the largest such event since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. We will bring you the latest updates throughout the day.
G7 leaders did not discuss Vladimir Putin’s proposals for peace in Ukraine since everyone knew they were not serious, Olaf Scholz said shortly before leaving for Switzerland, where a Ukraine conference opens on Saturday.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrived in Switzerland on Friday ahead of the two-day Ukraine peace summit. Zelenskiy said talks would focus on nuclear safety, food security, the return of prisoners of war and Ukrainian children taken to Russian-controlled territory.
Kamala Harris, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the leaders of Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada and Japan are among those set to attend the Swiss summit in Lucerne. Despite months of Ukrainian and Swiss lobbying, some others will not be there, most notably China. The gathering comes after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow would only enter peace talks after Ukraine pulls its troops out of the east and south of the country – a plan which Zelenskiy has dismissed.
On the ground in Ukraine, a Russian airstrike killed one person and injured at least four in the northern Sumy region on Friday, the military administration there said. The strike hit the town of Shostka, about 45km (28 miles) from the border with Russia, it said on Telegram, giving no details about damage. The strike came as Kyiv and Moscow staged dozens of drone and missile attacks overnight on Thursday and during Friday.
Ukrainian attacks on southern Russia’s Belgorod region killed six people on Friday, officials said. Four bodies were pulled from the rubble of a multi-floor apartment building hit by Ukrainian shelling in the border town of Shebekino, Russia’s emergencies ministry said, adding after midnight that 50% of the rubble had been cleared. A Ukrainian drone struck a car in a village near Shebekino, killing the driver, said the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. He said a woman was killed in her home when it was struck by rocket fire in the village of Oktyabrsky, farther west.
Russia launched 17 missiles and nearly 500 drones on Friday, Ukraine’s general staff said. Drone attacks killed a 54-year-old man in the southern Kherson region and injured a 17-year-old girl in the eastern city of Dnipro, regional authorities said. Three people were injured in a drone attack in the eastern Sumy region and several homes damaged in the neighbouring Kharkiv region.
The EU has ramped up its production of projectiles and will match Russia’s production capacity next year, the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, told French news outlet La Tribune.