KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A senior Kremlin official said Friday that Russian police and the National Guard will remain in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas and police the industrial-rich region even as a peace deal ends Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine.
The remarks by Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov underscore Moscow’s ambition to maintain a presence in Donbas after the war. Ukraine is likely to reject such a position as US-led negotiations drag on.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian units had recaptured several settlements and neighborhoods near the town of Kupiansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region, following a month-long operation aimed at reversing Russian advances there.
Kupiansk has been in recent months one of the most closely contested sectors of the roughly 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, and the claimed Ukrainian advance of about 40 square km. (15 square miles) would be a setback for Russia.
Less than two months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukrainian troops in Kupiansk were surrounded and offered to negotiate their surrender. He said a media visit to the area would prove this. Putin tried to portray Russia as negotiating from a position of strength in the war.
Obstacles in the push for peace
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office said it would host Zelenskyy on Monday for talks as peace efforts gather momentum and European leaders try to steer the talks. Later, numerous European heads of state and government, as well as leaders of the European Union and NATO, will join the meeting, according to a statement.
Moscow will give its blessing to the ceasefire only after Ukrainian forces withdraw from the front line, Ushakov also said in comments published Friday in the Russian business daily Kommersant.
He told Kommersant that “it is entirely possible that there will be no Russian or Ukrainian troops (in Donbas)” in a post-war scenario. But he said “there will be the National Guard, our police, whatever is needed to maintain order and organize life.”
For months, US negotiators have tried to push through each side’s demands as US President Donald Trump pushes for a quick end to the war in Russia and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has hit a major hurdle over who keeps Ukrainian territory that Russian forces have so far occupied.
Since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the seizure of territory in the east by Russian-backed separatists later that year, as well as land taken after the full-scale invasion was launched on February 24, 2022, Russia has captured about 20 percent of its neighbor.
Ukraine says its constitution does not allow it to hand over land. Russia, which illegally annexed Donetsk and three other regions in 2022, says the same. Ushakov said that “regardless of the outcome (of the peace negotiations), this territory (Donbass) is the territory of the Russian Federation.”
On Thursday, Trump compared the negotiations to a very complex real estate deal. He said he wanted to see more progress in the talks before sending envoys to possible meetings with European leaders at the weekend.
In October, Trump said the Donbas region would have to be “cut” to end the war.
Ukrainian counterattacks
In recent months, the Russian military has made a determined push to gain control of all parts of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk, which together make up the valuable Donbas region.
Its slow salvo in the Ukrainian countryside, using its significant troop advantage in a corrosive war of attrition, was costly in terms of casualties and armor losses. Although outnumbered, the Ukrainian defenders held firm in many areas and counter-attacked in others.
Ukrainian forces said on Friday they had advanced around Kupiansk. They have gradually cut off Russian supply routes to the city since September 22 and regained control of the villages of Kindrashivka and Radkivka, as well as several neighborhoods in the north of the city, according to a statement from the Khartia Corps of the Ukrainian National Guard posted on Facebook.
Fighting continues in the center of Kupiansk, where more than 200 Russian soldiers are surrounded, the statement said.
On Friday, Zelenskyy posted a video of himself standing on the road to Kupiansk. Explosions could be heard in the background as he spoke.
“Today, it is extremely important to achieve results on the battlefield so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy,” Zelenskyi said in the video, praising his troops on Ukraine’s Ground Forces Day.
Russian officials had no immediate comment, and the Ukrainian’s statements could not be independently verified.
Ukraine has also developed its long-range strike capabilities using domestically produced weapons to disrupt Russia’s war machine.
Its special operations forces, or SSO, said on Friday that an operation in the Caspian Sea struck two Russian ships carrying military equipment and weapons.
Ships named Kompozitor Rakhmaninov and Askar-Saridzha are sanctioned by the US for transporting weapons between Russia and Iran, the SSO announced in a statement on social media. He did not say what weapons he used in his attack.
Cross-border drone strikes
A drone attack in Ukraine injured seven people, including a child, in the Russian city of Tver, Acting Governor Vitali Korolev said on Friday. Debris from the falling drone hit an apartment building in the city, which is northwest of Moscow, Korolev said.
Russia’s air defense destroyed 90 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced.
Russian drones struck a residential area in Pavlohrad, in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region, killing one person and injuring four others, the head of the local military administration, Vladyslav Haivanenko, wrote on the Telegram messaging channel on Friday.
Ukraine’s southern Odesa region came under a large-scale drone attack overnight, according to regional chief Oleh Kiper. The attack affected energy infrastructure, he said. More than 90,000 people were left without electricity on Friday morning, Deputy Energy Minister Roman Andarak said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 80 drones across the country overnight.
___
Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia. Associated Press writer Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.