RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

More Ukrainians want talks with Russia – WSJ

An increasing number of Ukrainians want Kiev to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Moscow, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The US outlet acknowledged in an article on Tuesday that “some Ukrainians are asking a question that had until recently been taboo: Is it time to try to negotiate?”
Support for talks with Russia has been “creeping upward” in Ukraine since the failure of Kiev’s much-hyped counteroffensive last year, according to the WSJ.

Another poll, published by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early August, suggested that 57% of the public wanted dialogue with Russia to begin.

The outlet cited a 33-year-old school teacher from the southeastern city of Zaporozhye, who said that she is willing to give up any part of territory in exchange for peace so that her husband could return home from the front line. “Where can we go with this war?” she wondered.

The group that is most skeptical about a peace deal with Russia is the Ukrainian military, with one recent survey showing that only 18% of active-duty troops and veterans are in favor of the talks, the article read. According to the same poll, 15% of soldiers and veterans said they would join an armed protest if Kiev signs an unfavorable agreement with Moscow.

The members of the military who spoke to the WSJ said that they were concerned that Russia could use a pause in the fighting to prepare for a new attack on Ukraine and that seeking peace with concessions would mean that the sacrifice of their fallen comrades had been in vain.

During his meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Friday, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky suggested that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine should end “this fall.”

According to Zelensky, in order for this happen, NATO must keep arming Kiev and increase pressure on Moscow to agree to the Ukrainian peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian forces from all territories that Kiev considers its own, including Crimea, and for Moscow to pay reparations and submit its officials to war tribunals.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow had “never refused”negotiations with Kiev, but stressed that they should take place “not on the basis of some ephemeral demands but on the basis of the documents that were agreed to and actually initialized in Istanbul” in late March 2022, when the sides last sat at the negotiating table.

During the talks in Türkiye, Ukraine was willing to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces, and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees, Putin said.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine targets Moscow in biggest drone attack yet

Ukraine targeted the Russian capital on Tuesday in its biggest drone attack so far, killing at least one and wrecking dozens of homes in the Moscow region and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow.

Russia, the world's biggest nuclear power, said it had destroyed at least 20 Ukrainian attack drones as they swarmed over the Moscow region, which has a population of more than 21 million, and 124 more over eight other regions.

At least one person was killed near Moscow, Russian authorities said. Three of Moscow's four airports were closed for more than six hours and almost 50 flights were diverted.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the drone attack was another reminder of the real nature of Ukraine's political leadership, which he said was made up of Russia's enemies.

"There is no way that night time strikes on residential neighbourhoods can be associated with military action," said Peskov.

"The Kyiv regime continues to demonstrate its nature. They are our enemies and we must continue the special military operation to protect ourselves from such actions," he said, using the expression Moscow uses to describe its war in Ukraine.

Kyiv said Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, had attacked it overnight with 46 drones, of which 38 were destroyed.

The drone attacks on Russia damaged at high-rise apartment buildings in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, setting flats on fire, residents told Reuters.

A 46-year-old woman was killed and three people were wounded in Ramenskoye, Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Residents said they awoke to blasts and fire.

"I looked at the window and saw a ball of fire," Alexander Li, a resident of the district told Reuters. "The window got blown out by the shockwave."

Georgy, a resident who declined to give his surname, said he heard a drone buzzing outside his building in the early hours.

"I drew back the curtain and it hit the building right before my eyes, I saw it all," he said. "I took my family and we ran outside."

The Ramenskoye district, some 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin, has a population of around a quarter of a million people, according to official data.

More than 70 drones were also downed over Russia's Bryansk region and tens more over other regions, Russia's defence ministry said. There was no damage or casualties reported there.

As Russia advances in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv has taken the war to Russia with a cross-border attack into Russia's western Kursk region that began on Aug. 6 and by carrying out increasingly large drone attacks deep into Russian territory.

DRONE WAR

The war has largely been a grinding artillery and drone war along the 1,000 km (620 mile) heavily fortified front line in southern and eastern Ukraine involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

Moscow and Kyiv have both sought to buy and develop new drones, deploy them in innovative ways, and seek new ways to destroy them - from using shotguns to advanced electronic jamming systems.

Both sides have turned cheap commercial drones into deadly weapons while ramping up their own production and assembly to attack targets including tanks and energy infrastructure such as refineries and airfields.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sought to insulate Moscow from the grinding rigours of the war, has called Ukrainian drone attacks that target civilian infrastructure such as nuclear power plants "terrorism" and has vowed a response.

Moscow and other big Russian cities have largely been insulated from the war.

Russia itself has hit Ukraine with thousands of missiles and drones in the last two-and-a-half years, killing thousands of civilians, wrecking much of the country's energy system and damaging commercial and residential properties across the country.

Ukraine says it has a right to strike back deep into Russia, though Kyiv's Western backers have said they do not want a direct confrontation between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine about Tuesday's attacks. Both sides deny targeting civilians.

Tuesday's attack follows drone attacks Ukraine launched in early September chiefly targeting Russia's energy and power facilities.

Authorities in the Tula region, which neighbours the Moscow region to its north, said drone wreckage had fallen onto a fuel and energy facility but that the "technological process" of the facility was not affected.

RT/Reuters