Russia just shut down the idea of peace talks between President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, despite U.S. President Donald Trump saying that he had started arranging a sit-down.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that there’s no scheduled meeting. “Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky, when the agenda would be ready for a summit,” Lavrov said. Then he added, “And this agenda is not ready at all.”
Trump had a face-to-face meeting with Putin in Alaska, then later hosted Zelensky at the White House with some European leaders in attendance.
But while Trump was selling the idea of diplomacy, Russia didn’t hit pause. Instead, missile strikes on Ukraine ramped up again, one of them targeting an electronics plant tied to a U.S. company.
That strike, coming days after the meetings, raised even more questions about whether Trump actually has any influence on ending the war. JD Vance, Trump’s vice president, tried to keep a straight face during his own NBC interview, saying they’re still betting on “energetic diplomacy” to end the war.
“We’re going to eventually be successful, or we’ll hit a brick wall,” Vance said. “And if we hit a brick wall, then we’re going to continue this process of negotiation, of applying leverage.”
That “leverage” seemed nowhere in sight by Sunday night, when Russia publicly blamed Ukraine for a drone assault on a nuclear power station.
Ukraine attacks Kursk reactor and oil pipeline in the same 24 hours
During Ukraine’s 34th Independence Day, drone strikes hit the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in western Russia, near the Ukrainian border. Reactor number three’s capacity dropped by 50 percent, and Russian officials said other power infrastructure also got hit in the overnight strikes.
According to the plant’s news update on Telegram, the fire was put out quickly, nobody was hurt, and radiation levels stayed normal. Two other reactors are still operating but aren’t producing power, while one remains shut for repairs.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that radiation readings near the site were stable, posting, “Monitoring confirms normal radiation levels near Kursk NPP” on X.
Alexander Khinshtein, the acting governor of Kursk, said the plant is just 60 kilometers from the border and called the drone strikes a breach of “all international conventions.” He called the attack a threat to nuclear safety, a line Moscow has used many times when its energy sites come under fire.
But Ukraine wasn’t done yet. Robert Brovdi, who commands Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, confirmed they also went after the Unecha pumping station in Bryansk, which is part of the Druzhba oil pipeline.
That pipeline still sends Russian crude to Hungary and Slovakia—the only two EU countries still taking fuel from Moscow. Bryansk’s governor Alexander Bogomaz said Himars rockets and drones were both used in the attack.
The hit forced a total shutdown of oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia. Their foreign ministers, Péter Szijjártó and Juraj Blanár, told the European Commission that the suspension could last five days or more.
In a letter, they wrote, “The physical and geographical reality is that without this pipeline, the safe supply of our countries is simply not possible.” Hungary gets more than half its crude from Druzhba, and this was the third time in a short period the system got hit.
On Facebook, Szijjártó called it “another attack on the energy security of our country. Another attempt to drag us into war.”
While the EU keeps rallying behind Kyiv with weapons and aid, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has stayed on the sidelines. He hasn’t supported military, political, or economic packages for Ukraine.
And just last year, he flew to Moscow and held one-on-one talks with Putin, making him one of the only European leaders to do that since the full invasion started.
Now with fuel to Hungary and Slovakia blocked and a nuclear site in Russia on fire, the gap between Trump’s version of progress and the actual events on the ground keeps getting wider.
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Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/russia-putin-has-no-plans-to-meet-zelensky/
