The United States reserves the right to hold talks with Russia at the senior level on risk reduction, the White House has announced.
This was in reference to a media report that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has been talking to Moscow.
The Kremlin on Monday declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report that Washington held undisclosed talks with top Russian officials about avoiding further escalation in the Ukraine war.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Sullivan spoke with senior Russian officials in the hope of reducing the risk the war in Ukraine spills over or escalates into a nuclear conflict.
US citizen recently died in Ukraine: State Department
A US citizen recently died in Ukraine, a State Department spokesperson confirmed Monday.
“We can confirm the death of a US citizen in Ukraine,” the State Department spokesperson stated.
“We are in touch with the family and providing all possible consular assistance,” the spokesperson said, adding, “Out of respect for the family’s privacy during this difficult time, we have nothing further to add.”
The spokesperson did not provide details on the identity of the person who died or the circumstances of their death.
This is the sixth American who has died in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February.
US officials urge Ukraine to signal it is still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia
Senior US officials have in recent weeks been urging Ukraine to signal it is still open to diplomatic discussions with Russia, amid concerns that public support for the country’s war effort could wane with no end to the conflict in sight and neither side willing to begin peace talks, sources familiar with the discussions tell CNN.
The discussions are not aimed at encouraging the Ukrainians to negotiate now – rather, the US wants Kyiv to convey more clearly that it wants to find a resolution to the conflict and that Ukraine has the moral high ground, sources said.
Officials including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan began more urgently pressing the Ukrainians to shift their rhetoric after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree in early October ruling out any negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That decree came in response to Russia’s self-declared annexation of territories in eastern Ukraine following sham referendums there.
“We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky noted last month.
Sullivan discussed the issue directly with Zelensky during a trip to Kyiv last week, the sources added. He expressed the US’ view that categorically ruling out any talks with Putin plays into the Russian leader’s hand by fueling the Kremlin narrative that the Ukrainians are refusing to talk.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is “open to” negotiation with Ukraine but “at the moment we do not see such an opportunity, because Kyiv turned into a law [their decision] not to continue any negotiations.”
The Washington Post first reported that the US is urging Ukraine to appear open to talks.
The advice to the Ukrainians is also coming ahead on the eve of what could be a tough winter for Europe, which has already been experiencing soaring energy costs tied to Russia’s invasion and warnings has warned of potential blackouts and gas rationing stemming from the energy crunch.
Ukrainian power company says Kyiv and Kharkiv regions are most vulnerable to power outages
Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo announced that power supplies are most vulnerable in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions after a campaign of Russian missile attacks against power infrastructure.
Ukrenergo’s CEO, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, said on Ukrainian television Monday that the situation was tough after five massive missile strikes and a number of smaller attacks.
“Repair teams are working 24/7 in order to fix the damage caused in the past weeks. The most difficult situation is in the Kyiv region and Kharkiv region,” Kudrytskyi stated, adding, “So this is where the scheduled outages, hourly outages as we call them, are in place and additional emergency outages take place on top of them from time to time in order to balance the energy system in these regions.”
“We are working on improving the situation within the grid in Kyiv city and Kyiv region as well as in the north region, consisting of Kharkiv region, Sumy region and Poltava region,” he continued.
Kudrytskyi said that if there was no more shelling, there should be improvements in a few more days.
He added power engineers would do everything possible to avoid a total blackout.
Russian soldiers in Donetsk complain about being sent into an “incomprehensible battle”
In a letter purportedly sent from the front lines to a regional governor in Russia, the men of the 155th Brigade of the Russian Pacific Fleet Marines say they were thrown into an “incomprehensible battle” in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
The letter, published by a prominent Russian military blog on Monday, was sent to the Governor of Primorsky Krai.
“Once again we were thrown into an incomprehensible battle by General Muradov and his brother-in-law, his countryman Akhmedov, so that Muradov could earn bonuses to make him look good in the eyes of Gerasimov [Russia’s Chief of the General Staff],” it said.
“As a result of the “carefully” planned offensive by the “great commanders” we lost about 300 men, dead and wounded, with some MIA over the past 4 days,” the letter noted, adding, “We lost 50 percent of our equipment. That’s our brigade alone. The district command together with Akhmedov are hiding these facts and skewing the official casualty statistics for fear of being held accountable.”
In the letter, they asked the governor, Oleg Kozhemyako, “For how long will such mediocrities as Muradov and Akhmedov be allowed to continue to plan the military actions just to keep up appearances and gain awards at the cost of so many people’s lives?”
Russian forces suffering heavy losses in Donetsk region: Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the intense combat in parts of Donetsk region “the epicenter of the biggest madness of the occupiers.”
“They are dying in hundreds every day,” Zelensky said, adding, “The ground in front of the Ukrainian positions is literally littered with the bodies of the occupiers.”
Then speaking in Russian, Zelensky stated that some soldiers in the Pavlivka area had complained to the governor of their region, Primorsky Krai, in the Russian Far East, as CNN reported earlier Monday.
In response, Zelensky added, the governor — Oleg Kozhemyako — had noted that the losses were “not that big.”
In a Telegram post Monday, Kozhemyako said, “We contacted our Marine commanders on the front lines. These are guys who have been in combat since the beginning of the operation.”
He added they had told him, “We are attacking hard, yes there are losses, but far from that.”
Kozhemyako stressed the combat commander had emphasized that the losses of the [Primorsky] troops were considerably exaggerated.
Zelensky’s adviser: Kyiv never refused to negotiate with Moscow
Kyiv has never refused to negotiate with Moscow and it is ready for talks with Russia’s future leader, but not with Vladimir Putin, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president has said.
The comments on Twitter by Mykhailo Podolyak followed a Washington Post report on Saturday that said the administration of US President Joe Biden was privately encouraging Ukrainian leaders to signal an openness to negotiate with Moscow.
“Ukraine has never refused to negotiate. Our negotiating position is known and open,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter, adding that Russia should first withdraw its troops from Ukraine.
“Is Putin ready? Obviously not. Therefore, we are constructive in our assessment: we will talk with the next leader of [Russia],” he continued.
Poll shows majority of Ukrainians expect prosperous future in EU
The majority of Ukrainians (88 percent) have said they believe their country will be a prosperous member of the European Union in a decade, according to a poll published by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology on Monday.
Ukraine applied for membership in the EU shortly after Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February, and Kyiv was granted candidate status in June.
The invasion has killed thousands of civilians and devastated vast tracts of territory and infrastructure.
The poll surveyed 1,000 respondents across Ukraine with the exception of the annexed peninsula of Crimea and other areas that were occupied by Russian proxies before February 24, when Moscow launched its invasion.
Ukrainians were optimistic about their chances of joining the EU even in the east of the country, which has seen particularly heavy fighting, the poll found.
Seventy-six percent of respondents there saw the future of their country in the EU. Only five percent said they believed the war would ultimately leave the country with a destroyed economy and provoke a large exodus of Ukrainians.