Shaun
Ukraine has claimed to have struck a Russian industrial facility producing fuel for missiles, as Moscow says it has foiled several assassination plots on senior officers.
Kyiv said on Thursday that its air force had had carried out a strike in Russia’s Rostov region on a factory which was used to produce solid fuel for ballistic missiles used in attacks on Ukraine.
It did say what damage was caused in the attack or give an exact date, but said it had been struck in the past few days.
It comes as Russia claimed it had foiled several Ukrainian plots to assassinate senior officers and their families using bombs disguised as power banks or document folders.
The country’s Federal Security Service said it had arrested four Russians accused of helping plan the attack, just weeks after a high-ranking oddicer was killed outside his Moscow apartment by a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
It comes weeks after Ukraine’s intelligence service killed a top Russian officer outside his apartment building in Moscow by detonating a bomb attached to an electric scooter.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he would be open to peace talks with Ukraine in Slovakia “if it comes to that”.
Mr Putin said Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, who this week visited the Kremlin, had offered his country as a location for negotiations as the war in Ukraine nears the three-year mark.
The Russian president said the Slovakian authorities “would be happy to provide their own country as a platform for negotiations”.
“We are not opposed, if it comes to that. Why not? Since Slovakia takes such a neutral position,” Mr Putin said, adding he was resolved to end the conflict in Ukraine, which started with a land, air and sea invasion of Russia’s smaller neighbour in February 2022.
