Zelensky meets Vance as Russian drones pound Ukraine

ROME: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with US Vice President JD Vance on Sunday, for the first time since the heated debate in the White House in February, as Russia launched a “record” drone barrage on Kyiv.

The meeting came two days after the first direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in over three years in Turkey, where a prisoner exchange was agreed but no progress made on securing a ceasefire.

“We discussed the talks in Istanbul, where the Russians sent a low-level delegation with no decision-making powers,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram following the meeting with Vance at the US ambassador’s residence in Rome after the two of them attended Pope Leo’s inaugural mass in the Vatican.

“We also touched on the need for sanctions against Russia, bilateral trade, defence cooperation, the situation on the battlefield and the future exchange of prisoners,” Zelensky added.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Zelensky’s aide Andriy Yermak were also present at the meeting, where the two sides discussed steps towards a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.

Vance also held a meeting with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Italy’s Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. A senior Ukrainian official from the president’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that Zelensky and Vance also discussed preparations for Monday’s telephone conversation between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Saturday that he would speak by phone with Putin on Monday in order to stop the “BLOODBATH” in Ukraine.

The leaders of Britain, Germany and France also want to talk to Trump ahead of that call with Putin, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.

The US president has increased pressure on Ukraine and so far abstained from critisising Putin, who started the biggest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

The official said that the Rome encounter went “better” than the Oval Office row three months ago, when Vance publically accused Zelensky of being “disrespectful” towards Trump, who told the Ukrainian leader he should be more “thankful” and that he had no “cards” to play in negotiations with Russia

Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska were earlier granted an audience with Leo following his inauguration.

“We thank the Vatican for its willingness to become a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia,” Ukraine’s leader said after meeting the pontiff.

“The martyred Ukraine is waiting for negotiations for a just and lasting peace to finally happen,” Leo XIV said during his inauguration.

Ukraine on Sunday said that Russia had launched a record number of drones at the country overnight, targeting various regions, including that of the capital Kyiv, where a woman was killed.

Another man was killed in the southeastern Kherson region, where a railway station and private houses and cars were hit. The Ukrainian air force said that Russia had launched “273 Shahed attack drones and various types of imitator drones”, of which 88 were destroyed and 128 more went astray “without negative consequences”.