Zelenskyy Says Trilateral Peace Talks With Russia and US Will Resume in November

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has announced that Kyiv, Washington and Moscow will hold a trilateral meeting in November in an effort to restart stalled peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Speaking in an interview on Sunday, he said his government is open to dialogue.

"We are ready to talk," Zelenskyy said. He explained that any territorial question must be handled at the level of national leaders, while other matters belong with technical groups. "All this can therefore be discussed in November," he said. He also renewed his call for a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin, arguing that Putin is the only person in Russia able to take the major decisions needed to end the war.

Zelenskyy made clear that two subjects are off the table. Ukraine will not discuss caps on its armed forces, nor a postwar neutrality imposed on it. Kyiv has long sought membership of Nato, even though some alliance members remain reluctant.

On the security front, Zelenskyy said American warnings about imminent Russian ballistic missile strikes, which are vital to Ukraine's air defences, have been fully restored. He told the TSN television channel that SpaceX's Starshield satellite internet had been running at speeds of up to 420km/h since early Saturday, following a meeting with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo. Starshield had been throttled earlier in October while Washington was applying diplomatic pressure on Kyiv.

That pressure centres on Ukrainian strikes against Russian oil refineries, which the United States says push energy prices higher. Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv will halt them only under certain conditions: if Moscow stops hitting Ukraine's power infrastructure, if the US lets Ukraine use Starshield over Russia to locate the launch sites of ballistic missiles, or if Washington supplies Patriot missiles.

Zelenskyy also described the scale of recent Russian attacks. In an online post, he said Russia had launched about 1,600 guided bombs, 48 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, and almost 2,300 strike drones at Ukraine in the past week. He used the figures to renew his appeal to western allies to speed up deliveries of interceptors.

Russia's defence ministry said its drones hit a cargo vessel heading for the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk overnight and another heading for Odesa during the day, claiming both were supplying the Ukrainian army. It also said its forces struck a logistics centre, a distribution centre and a logistics terminal in Kharkiv. Reuters could not confirm the reports.

In Russia, local authorities said a Ukrainian drone attack overnight on the border city of Belgorod killed three people and injured 13, and a separate drone strike later on Sunday killed one more. Regional governor Alexander Shuvayev said the overnight attack damaged 30 apartment buildings.

Elsewhere, Bulgaria's presidential election on Sunday ended without a winner, so the next head of state will be chosen in a runoff. Andrey Gyurov, candidate of the pro-western reformist opposition, performed surprisingly well and will face incumbent leftist president Iliana Yotova. Yotova opposes military aid to Ukraine and favours dialogue with Russia, while Gyurov has often voiced firm support for Kyiv. The vote took place amid security concerns following a series of drone attacks on ships in the Black Sea.