Ukrainian drone attack causes fire in Russian Black Sea port before talks with the US

A fire broke out in one of Russia’s Black Sea ports on Sunday after a Ukrainian drone attack injured at least two people, authorities said. The strike comes days before new US-brokered talks aimed at ending the near 4 years war.

The attack on the port of Taman in the Krasnodar region damaged an oil storage tank, a warehouse and terminals, according to regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev. Meanwhile, falling debris from Russian drones damaged civil and transportation infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odessa region, officials said, disrupting power and water supplies.

Kondratyev said more than 100 people were working to put out several fires at the port, according to Reuters. It added that the attacks hit the resort city of Sochi and the town of Yurovka, causing less significant damage.

Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on Russian energy sites are aimed at depriving Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to carry out its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, electricity and running water in what kyiv officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”

The attacks came just days before another round of US-mediated talks between envoys from Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva. There have already been two rounds of talks under this trilateral format so far this year, held in Abu Dhabi, but this week’s session will be the first on European soil, and comes just days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full invasion of its neighbor on February 22.

Neither side has expressed optimism that the negotiations will result in a comprehensive ceasefire agreement, but there has been some progress on other issues.

Speaking in the Munich security conference In Germany on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested that questions remained about future security guarantees for his country. Zelenskyy also questioned how the concept of a free trade zone, proposed by the United States, would work in the Donbas region, which Russia insists kyiv must abandon in exchange for peace.

He said that the Americans want peace as soon as possible and that the American team wants to sign all the agreements on Ukraine at the same time, while Ukraine wants guarantees for the country’s future security to be signed first.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Zelenskyy in Munich and discussed “Ukraine’s security and deepening economic and defense partnerships.”

“President Trump wants a solution that will end the bloodshed once and for all,” Rubio said in a social media post.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, echoed Zelenskyy’s concerns.

“Unless we have real security guarantees on whatever peace agreement is finally determined, we will be here again, because one of the things we know is that Russia has prepared not only for Ukraine, but to go beyond Ukraine,” he told reporters in Munich on Sunday.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russia hoped to gain diplomatically what it had not achieved on the battlefield and hoped the United States would make concessions at the negotiating table. But Kallas told the Munich conference on Sunday that key Russian demands – including lifting sanctions and unfreezing assets – were decisions for Europe.

“If we want sustainable peace, we need concessions from Russia as well,” he said.

Previous U.S.-led efforts to find a consensus to end the war, most recently two rounds of talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, have failed to resolve difficult issues, such as the future of Ukraine’s Donbass industrial heartland, which is largely occupied by Russian forces.