Russia names former FSB officer behind Ukraine invasion to lead peace talks

Russia has named a secretive former FSB chief who played a key role in planning Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to lead next week’s peace talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.

Moscow announced that Sergei Beseda, the former head of the spy agency’s fifth directorate – who oversaw intelligence operations in Ukraine and orchestrated the recruitment of collaborators before the full-scale invasion – will travel to Riyadh for Monday’s talks with the US.

Both sides said the talks in Saudi Arabia were aimed at finalising a limited ceasefire deal agreed this week, and initiating negotiations on a maritime ceasefire.

Before Russia’s early failures in the invasion, reports surfaced that Beseda had briefly fallen out of favour with Putin owing to flawed intelligence in the lead-up to the war.

Beseda will be joined by Grigory Karasin, the chair of the Russian senate’s committee on international affairs, for a new round of talks with US officials.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of making “unnecessary demands” that will drag out the war, and said Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure had not stopped despite Putin’s claims about his readiness to halt them.

Zelenskyy says Putin's words are 'at odds with reality' after strikes on Ukraine – video

Moscow on Thursday doubled down on its insistence that a requirement for serious peace talks would be the complete cessation of both foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence to Kyiv.

Trump, speaking on Fox News earlier, denied that arms supplies were discussed during his call with Putin, despite a Kremlin readout explicitly stating Putin had demanded a “complete cessation of foreign military aid to Ukraine” as a condition for long-term peace.

There also remains uncertainty over the timing and terms of a limited US-brokered ceasefire agreed this week, with both countries exchanging aerial assaults overnight.

Zelenskyy, who travelled to Oslo on Thursday, said Russia had launched nearly 200 Iranian Shahed drones overnight, wounding at least 10 people, including four children, and damaging “residential buildings, a church, and infrastructure”.

“Russia’s strikes on Ukraine continue despite its propagandistic statements … With each launch, the Russians show the world their true attitude toward peace,” Zelenskyy said in a morning statement on Telegram.

Russian forces also struck a village in the Sumy region and carried out a series of airstrikes on a town near the city of Kharkiv.

Ukraine launched its own mass drone attack on Russia, appearing to hit a key airbase about 435 miles (700km) from the frontlines.

The airbase in the Russian city of Engels hosts the Tupolev Tu-160 nuclear-capable heavy strategic bombers that have frequently been involved in strikes against Ukrainian cities.

“Engels today suffered the most massive UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] attack of all time,” Roman Busargin, the governor of Russia’s Saratov region, wrote on Telegram.

Busargin said the attack had left an airfield on fire and that people living nearby had been evacuated. He did not specifically mention the airbase, but it is the main airfield in the area.

Images shared by Russian Telegram channels showed thick smoke rising from an area west of the airfield, with reports suggesting an ammunition depot cruise missile exploded. Regional officials said 10 people were injured in the strike.

Zelenskyy said on Wednesday he had signed up to a partial ceasefire that Trump agreed with Vladimir Putin a day earlier after what the Ukrainian leader had described as a “positive, very substantive and frank” call with the US president.

But there was confusion over what exactly Trump and Putin had agreed after Moscow and Washington gave different readouts afterwards.

Trump, in an initial post on Truth Social, said the partial ceasefire would apply to “energy and infrastructure”, giving the impression it would extend to all civilian infrastructure. Zelenskyy, after his call with Trump, spoke about “ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure”.

However, Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday the ceasefire would apply only to the energy sector, and a White House statement on Wednesday also referred only to energy.

In a Zoom call with journalists late on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said he had “received signals” from the US that the ceasefire would include civilian infrastructure as well as energy facilities.

Zelenskyy said his team would draw up a list of the kind of facilities they thought could be included and would present them to the Americans at upcoming negotiations.

The Ukrainian leader on Thursday also said he had not discussed with Trump any potential US ownership of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, that is now in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

According to a readout of Zelenskyy’s call with Trump provided by US officials, the pair “discussed Ukraine’s electricity supply and nuclear power plants”.

“The United States could significantly assist in managing these facilities, given its expertise in electricity and utility operations,” the summary continued, adding that US ownership would provide “the best protection” for Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Zelenskyy on Thursday pushed back on the suggestion the plant could change ownership, repeatedly saying he discussed with Trump “how to find the solution from the situation and … take the station from the Russians, with options for the US to be involved in modernising or developing it further”. He added that “the issue of property, we did not discuss”.