Metropolis Desk-
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has stated that he is not opposed to holding peace negotiations over Ukraine. He claimed that African and Chinese initiatives may be used as a foundation for achieving peace in remarks made after meeting African leaders in St. Petersburg.
However, Mr. Putin also asserted that a cease-fire was impossible while the Ukrainian army was waging war. Following his speech, Russia claimed that a Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow had destroyed two office buildings.
Russia’s national news agency Tass said that flights were briefly suspended from Vnukovo Airport, southwest of the city center and that one person was hurt.
Regarding the drone incident, Ukraine has made no comments.
A witness who identified herself only by her first name, Liya, told Reuters that she could see smoke and fire.” We heard an explosion, and it was like a wave, everyone jumped,” she recalled. “Then there was a lot of smoke, and everything was obscured. You could see the fire from above.”
Both Ukraine and Russia have previously stated that they will not sit down for peace negotiations without a set of prerequisites.
Moscow asserts that Kyiv must accept its country’s “new territorial reality” despite Kyiv’s declaration that it will not cede any land. Russia invaded its neighbor last year and currently controls parts of the south and east of that nation.
At the late-night press conference on Saturday, Mr. Putin stated that there were no immediate intentions to escalate the fighting on the Ukrainian front. Additionally, he said that some individuals were causing internal harm to Russia and backed the detention of critics.
It is illegal to criticize Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and the majority of the opposition’s leading figures are either imprisoned or exiled.
The Russian president also informed reporters that Moscow launched some “preventive strikes” in response to an incident that occurred on a Crimean bridge earlier this month during the extensive briefing.
Following the bridge tragedy, which resulted in the deaths of two people, Mr. Putin threatened to retaliate against Ukraine for what he described as a “terrorist” act. Officially, Kyiv did not claim responsibility for the explosion on the bridge that connects the seized peninsula to Russia.
The Russia-Africa summit follows a meeting between an African delegation, which included the presidents and representatives of seven different nations, and Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky last month.
Recently, President Zelensky visited Ukrainian special forces close to Bakhmut, the city where some of the war’s heaviest combat has been occurring.
Russian soldiers took the eastern city in May, according to Ukrainian authorities, but Kyiv’s forces are now reportedly making slow progress there. As the country’s interior ministry, rockets fired overnight towards the city of Sumy in eastern Ukraine killing one person and injuring five others.
A Russian missile reportedly struck a school on Saturday night, according to the ministry’s Telegram post.
A missile that struck “an open area” in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine on Saturday caused two deaths and one injury, according to a different report.
The “enemy missile’s” blast wave smashed out apartment windows and damaged a school and a supermarket according to Anatoliy Kurtiev, the local council’s secretary.
Source- BBC News
