The United States has offered a potential new format for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia with US and possibly European envoys participating, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says.
Ukraine will decide on the format once it is clear whether bilateral discussions with US negotiators that resumed on Friday are positive, Zelenskiy said, adding he planned to take up the matter with Ukraine's delegation chief Rustem Umerov.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, he did not go into specifics as to what kind of format US President Donald Trump's administration had proposed.
"The US said they would have a separate meeting with representatives of Russia. And they proposed the following format, as far as I understand: Ukraine, America, Russia, and, since there are representatives of Europe there, probably Europe as well," Zelenskiy said.
Later on Saturday Zelenskiy said Ukraine would back a proposal for three-sided talks if it facilitated more exchanges of prisoners and paved the way for meetings of the countries' leaders.
"America is now proposing a trilateral meeting with national security advisers - America, Ukraine, Russia," Zelenskiy told local journalists in Kyiv.
"If such a meeting could be held now to allow for swaps of prisoners of war or an agreement on a three-sided meeting of leaders, we would support such proposals. Let's see how things go."
US negotiators were set to meet Russian officials in Florida on Saturday.
Ukraine and Russia have not negotiated face to face since July but US-backed shuttle diplomacy to end the almost four-year-old war in Ukraine has intensified in recent weeks.
Ukrainian and European representatives held a round of discussions with US counterparts in the United States on Friday and agreed to resume contacts soon, Umerov said.
A Russian missile strike on port infrastructure in Odesa in southern Ukraine killed eight people and wounded 27, Ukraine's emergency service said on Saturday.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian drones hit a Russian oil rig, the military patrol ship Okhotnik and other facilities, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement on Saturday.
It said the ship was patrolling in the Caspian Sea near an oil and gas production platform.
The extent of the damage was still being clarified, Ukraine's forces said.
with AP
