Ukraine war latest: Trump says he and Putin will discuss ‘dividing up assets’ in Kyiv

Ukraine’s air defence units shot down 90 of 174 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack on Monday, the air force said.

It said 70 drones were lost, referring to the Ukrainian military using electronic warfare to redirect them.

“Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kyiv regions were affected by the Russian attack,” the military said on the Telegram messenger app.

Russia has been attacking Odesa and the Odesa region with drones and missiles on a daily basis for three weeks. The region is key for Ukrainian maritime exports.

One civilian was injured during the attack, which damaged a kindergarten, a private residential house, a shop and a passenger car, Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

Kiper said about 500 residents in the suburbs of Odesa were left without electricity after drones hit energy infrastructure, providing no further details.

The EU’s foreign affairs council will meet this morning to discuss security, with the focus being on Ukraine and the European efforts to bolster Kyiv outside of cooperation with the US.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kęstutis Budrys said: “This is the strategic moment for Europe. The decisions of today will shape the security of tomorrow.”

While Russia complains about the possibility of Western peacekeepers in Ukraine, French President Emmanual Macron has said Vladimir Putin and Russia has no say in the matter.

Le Parisien cited Mr Macron as saying that Moscow’s agreement wasn’t needed for such a deployment. “Ukraine is sovereign. If it asks for Allied forces to be on its territory, it’s not up to Russia to accept or not,” he said.

The French president spoke of participating nations each deploying several thousand troops to “key points” in Ukraine. Their missions could include providing training and supporting Ukrainian defences, to demonstrate long-term support for Kyiv.

Ukraine’s allies in Britain and Europe have said that any ceasefire and ultimate peace agreement must be negotiated with Ukraine involved in talks.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said over the weekend that Western allies other than the US were stepping up preparations to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire with Russia, with defence chiefs set to firm up “robust plans” next week.

Britain and France both have said that they are willing to send a peacekeeping force to monitor any ceasefire in Ukraine.

Russia has ruled out peacekeepers until the war has ended.

“It does not matter under what label Nato contingents were to be deployed on Ukrainian territory: be it the European Union, Nato, or in a national capacity,” one Russian official said.

“If they appear there, it means that they are deployed in the conflict zone with all the consequences for these contingents as parties to the conflict”.

In separate appearances on Sunday TV shows in the United States, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, emphasized that there were still challenges to be worked out before Russia agrees to a ceasefire, much less a final peaceful resolution to the war.

Asked on ABC whether the US would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep stretches of eastern Ukraine that it has seized, Mr Waltz replied, “Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?” He added that the negotiations had to be grounded in “reality.”

Mr Rubio told CBS a final peace deal would “involve a lot of hard work, concessions from both Russia and Ukraine,” and that it would be difficult to even begin those negotiations “as long as they’re shooting at each other.”

Conditions demanded by Russia to agree to a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine show that Moscow does not really want peace, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said.

“Those conditions that they have presented – it shows that they don’t really want peace, actually, because they are presenting as conditions all their ultimate goals that they want to achieve from the war,” Ms Kallas told reporters in Brussels.

The Ukrainian Air Force has said Russia launched 174 drones against it in an early morning assault, following earlier reports of damage in Kyiv and Nikopol.

It shot down 90 drones and 70 others were successfully diverted, the air force added

The strikes hit the Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kirovohrad, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kyiv regions, the post on messaging app Telegram said.