Zelenskyy will visit Turkey in a new bid to end the Russia-Ukraine war

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he will travel to Turkey this week in an attempt to jump-start negotiations on ending Russia’s war, which began nearly four years ago.

Turkey provided a setting for low-level talks between Ukraine and Russia earlier this year, though the only significant progress in Istanbul was on exchanging prisoners of war. U.S.-led international peace efforts have brought no breakthrough, either.

Zelenskyy said that he would be in Turkey on Wednesday, a day after visiting Spain where he hoped for pledges of new support on Tuesday.

“We are preparing to reinvigorate negotiations, and we have developed solutions that we will propose to our partners,” Zelenskyy said on social media, without providing details. “Doing everything possible to bring the end of the war closer is Ukraine’s top priority.”

On Thursday, Zelenskyy said that he would meet with senior government officials, as well as with the leadership of Ukraine’s Parliament and his political party, called Servant of the People.

The Ukrainian leader was meeting later Tuesday in Madrid with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and King Felipe VI, with a visit planned as well to Spain’s parliament.

Kicking off a busy week, Zelenskyy was in Paris on Monday where he signed a letter of intent to buy up to 100 Rafale warplanes from France, along with drones and ground-to-air systems.

On the battlefield, Ukraine launched a surprise aerial attack on energy infrastructure in occupied parts of its eastern Donetsk region.

The Russian-appointed head of the partially occupied region, Denis Pushilin, on Tuesday morning reported an “unprecedented” Ukrainian attack that damaged two thermal power stations in the region and left many areas without power. A day earlier, Pushilin also reported Ukrainian drones attacking energy infrastructure in the region, denying power to around 500,000 consumers. The occupied part of the region has also endured water shortages.

Ukrainian forces, despite being heavily outnumbered, are fighting hard to prevent Russia’s army from capturing any more of Donetsk.

In Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, meanwhile, a 17-year-old girl was killed and 10 other people were wounded in a Russian missile strike on the town of Berestyn, located about 110 kilometers (70 miles) from the Russian border, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said.

Russian drones sparked multiple fires in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro last night, injuring two people, said Vladyslav Haivanenko, the head of the regional military administration. The drones damaged six residential buildings, as well as the local offices of Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne, though the company said the building was empty at the time.

Ukraine’s railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia said that train cars and other infrastructure were damaged in the Dnipro attack.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia fired four ballistic Iskander-M missiles, along with 114 strike and decoy drones at the country overnight.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday that its air defenses shot down 31 Ukrainian drones over a number of Russian regions.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine