LVIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday as Russian forces kept up attacks on the besieged suburbs of Kyiv and the southern city of Mariupol while announcing they had used hypersonic missiles for the first time to destroy an ammunition depot in Ukraine’s west.
“It’s time to meet, time to talk,” Zelenskyy said in a video address early Saturday morning, repeating his desire to personally hold talks with Putin, as the war in Ukraine raged on for a fourth week amid a stream of refugees, a widening humanitarian crisis and fruitless ceasefire talks.
Russian military commanders’ “cruel and erroneous tactics” of targeting civilians and destroying apartments, hospitals and churches, Zelenskyy said, had failed and led only to harsh sanctions. In the absence of a peace settlement, he said Russia could face “such losses that several generations will not be enough for it to rise back up.”
