Ukraine wants a Zelenskyy-Putin summit to jolt stalled U.S.-led peace efforts

In this photo provided by the Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service, Russian Emergency Ministry employees work at the side of the damaged multi-storey apartment building hit by a Ukrainian drone in Syzran in Russia's Samara Region Wednesday, April 22, 2026. (Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP)

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine is pushing for face-to-face talks between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kyiv’s top diplomat said, presenting a potential summit as a way of injecting new momentum into U.S.-led efforts to end Russia’s more than four-year invasion of its neighbour.

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian drone attack deep inside Russia struck a residential building, killing a woman and a child, Russian officials said Wednesday.

Kyiv has asked Turkey to help facilitate top-level talks and has reached out to other capitals as potential hosts, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, adding that Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus.

“We are … advocating for a (summit) meeting now to bring new momentum to diplomacy,” Sybiha told reporters on Tuesday. His remarks were embargoed until Wednesday.

U.S.-mediated talks over the past year between delegations from Moscow and Kyiv have made little or no headway on key issues, such as the future of four Ukrainian regions Moscow is trying to capture but doesn’t fully control. With Washington’s attention now gripped by the Iran war, the talks are on ice.

Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Putin has refused. Putin thinks that time is on his side, that Western military and financial support will fade and that Ukraine’s resistance will eventually collapse, analysts say.

Meanwhile, a grim war of attrition continues along the about 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) front line that snakes along eastern and southern areas of Ukraine. Western officials and analysts claim Russia is suffering several tens of thousands of battlefield casualties each month, drawing comparisons to the carnage of World War I.

Independent verification of battlefield casualties and which side has the upper hand is not possible.

Ukraine has developed a domestic arms industry which is increasingly producing long-range drones and missiles capable of striking deep inside Russia. It has taken aim at Russia’s oil production and manufacturing plants that supply the Russian military.

In Syzran, a city in Russia’s Samara region that is about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of the border with Ukraine, a drone attack caused the collapse of a section of a residential building, local authorities said.

The bodies of a woman and a child were pulled out from under the rubble and 12 others were injured, local officials said.

Images from the scene showed a part of a four-story building reduced to a massive pile of rubble, with emergency workers on top of it.

Russian media reports said a Rosneft oil refinery — a frequent target of Ukrainian drone attacks — is located on the same street as the damaged building.

Ukraine’s aerial attacks on Russia increased by nearly four times last year, from 6,200 in 2024 to more than 23,000 in 2025, Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said last month.

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Hanna Arhirova, The Associated Press