WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — President Donald Trump has told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that the US could own and run Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as part of his latest bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
Following the Wednesday call with Trump, Zelensky said he had discussed Trump’s power plant takeover plan.
“We talked only about one power plant, which is under Russian occupation,” Zelensky, who was on an official visit to Finland, said during an online briefing, referring to the plant in Zaporizhzhia.
A wider ceasefire remains elusive with the Kremlin leader insisting in his own call with Trump on Tuesday that the West first stop all military aid for Ukraine.
Russian bombardments of eastern Ukraine killed two people overnight, local authorities said Thursday, while Moscow launched another large-scale drone barrage that wounded 10 and sparked fires hundreds of kilometers from the front.
Ukrainian officials in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions said that two people were killed and several others wounded after Russia dropped more than three dozen glide bombs on the towns in the border regions.
The Russian drone attack on the wwtown of Kropyvnytsky, hundreds of kilometers from the front line, wounded 10 people, including four children, and sent plumes of fire and smoke rising over the skyline, according to officials.
The Ukrainian railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia said its services had been disrupted in the region as a result of shelling.
The Ukrainian air force said that the Russian barrage, including on Kropyvnytsky, consisted of 171 drones and that its air defense shot down 75 drones. Another 63 were downed by electronic jamming systems or were lost.
Russia meanwhile said its air defense units had shot down 132 Ukrainian drones in several regions across the country.
The southwestern region of Saratov and its city of Engels “were today subjected to the most massive UAV (drone) attack eve The attack wounded two people in Engels and damaged schools and a hospital, Russia’s investigative committee said.