Ukraine has not commented on attack on cafe and hotel that comes despite \u2018productive\u2019 ongoing peace talks<\/b>
\nUkraine has not commented on attack on cafe and hotel that comes despite \u2018productive\u2019 ongoing peace talks
A Ukrainian drone strike killed 24 people and injured at least 50 more as they celebrated the new year in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine\u2019s Kherson region, Russian officials said, as tensions between the two countries continue to rise despite diplomats hailing productive peace talks.
Three drones struck a cafe and hotel in the resort town of Khorly on the Black Sea coast, the region\u2019s Moscow-installed leader, Vladimir Saldo, said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday. He said one of the drones was carrying an incendiary mixture that sparked a blaze.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim and the Associated Press was unable to independently verify the incident.
A number of Russian officials condemned the attack. The chair of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, said it strengthened Russia\u2019s resolve to quickly achieve its goals in its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine.
The strike \u201conce again demonstrates the validity of our initial demands,\u201d Matviyenko said.
The statement follows claims from Moscow that Ukraine had launched a long-range drone attack against one of Vladimir Putin\u2019s official residences in north-western Russia on Tuesday. Kyiv said the claims were a lie.
Russia\u2019s defence ministry said on Thursday that its specialists had accessed the navigation system in one of the drones it claimed was used in the attack, and that data extracted confirmed that Putin\u2019s residence was the target. The ministry did not share evidence of its findings, but officials said it would transfer the data to US officials \u201cthrough established channels\u201d.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the CIA had determined that no attempted attack had taken place. Donald Trump had initially said he was \u201cvery angry\u201d about the purported attack, but he later posted a link on social media to a New York Post editorial describing the Russian claims as \u201cbluster\u201d.
Russia\u2019s defence ministry also released a video of a downed drone it said was involved in the attack.
The night-time clip shows a man in camouflage gear, a helmet and a Kevlar vest standing near a damaged drone lying in snow. The man, his face covered, talks about the drone. Neither the man nor the defence ministrty provided any location or date, and neither the video nor its claims could be independently verified.
Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin\u2019s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have gathered pace in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in his new year address that a peace deal was \u201c90% ready\u201d but that the remaining 10%, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would \u201cdetermine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live\u201d.
Trump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Wednesday that he, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Trump\u2019s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, had a \u201cproductive call\u201d with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine \u201cto discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process\u201d.
\u201cWe focused on how to move the discussions forward in a practical way on behalf of [the] peace process, including strengthening security guarantees and developing effective deconfliction mechanisms to help end the war and ensure it does not restart,\u201d he wrote on X.
Ukraine\u2019s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, reaffirmed that European and Ukrainian officials planned to meet on Saturday, and Zelenskyy is expected to hold talks with European leaders next week.
With reporting by the Associated Press<\/p>\n