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A municipal employee checks the site of an apartment building damaged during a Russian attack on Lviv. /Stringer/Reuters
Donald Trump's Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg began talks in Kyiv on Monday on security and sanctions against Russia after the U.S. president said he would send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine.
Trump was also expected to announce a new plan to arm Ukraine with offensive weapons, American news website Axios cited two sources familiar with the matter as saying.
Separately, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov in Beijing on Sunday with Lavrov due to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) foreign ministers in China.
"The parties also discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis," Russia's foreign ministry said.
In this handout photograph, Ukraine's Head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak (L) greets U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg (R) upon his arrival in Kyiv. /Handout/Telegram/@ermaka2022
China-Russia meeting
Wang Yi hailed Beijing's "strategically valuable" relations with Moscow and told Lavrov that "China-Russia are the most stable, most mature and most strategically valuable relationship between major powers in the world today", according to a Chinese foreign ministry readout of their meeting.
"The current focus is to... deepen comprehensive strategic cooperation, promote each side's development and revitalisation, and jointly respond to the challenges brought by a turbulent and changing world," Wang said.
The two ministers "exchanged views on the Korean peninsula, the Ukraine crisis, the Iranian nuclear issue and other matters", the Chinese statement said.
Patriot missiles
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was expected to meet Kellogg in the Ukrainian capital, wants more defensive capabilities to fend off intense missile and drone attacks from Russia, which holds about one-fifth of Ukraine, is advancing in the east and shows no sign of abandoning its main military goals.
"We will send them Patriots, which they desperately need," Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside of Washington on Sunday. "We basically are going to send them various pieces of very sophisticated military equipment. They are going to pay us 100 percent for that, and that's the way we want it," Trump said.
Trump did not say how many Patriots he plans to send to Ukraine, but he said the United States would be reimbursed for their cost by the European Union.
Trump will also meet NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this week to discuss Ukraine among other issues, and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is set to visit Washington for talks with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Berlin has offered to pay for Patriot systems for Ukraine, under a proposal made public by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and has emerged as an important player as European states in NATO move to build up their military strength under U.S. pressure.
'Negotiated end'
Putin told Trump by phone on July 3 that Moscow wants a negotiated end to the conflict but will not step back from its original goals, a Kremlin aide said.
Putin says Russia was compelled to launch its so-called 'special military operation' in Ukraine to prevent the country from joining NATO and being used by the Western alliance as a launch pad to attack Russia. Ukraine and its European allies say that is a specious pretext for what they call an imperial-style operation.
Zelenskyy said he had instructed military commanders to present Kellogg with information on Russia's capabilities and Ukraine's prospects.
"Defense, strengthening security, weapons, sanctions, protecting our people, strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and the United States — there are many topics to discuss," Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential administration in Kyiv, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians on both sides, have been killed or wounded in Europe's biggest ground conflict since World War Two.
In the latest reported fighting, Ukrainian drones attacked a training centre at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine on Sunday evening, the Russian-installed administration of the Russia-held plant said on Monday. Ukraine has not commented on the alleged attack.
Russian forces have taken control of two villages in eastern Ukraine, Malynivka in the Zaporizhzhya region and Mayak in the Donetsk region, the Russian defense ministry said on Monday via its channel in Telegram.
The attacks follow a wave of drone and missile attacks on western Ukraine on Saturday, the most intense since the start of the conflict.
Russia launched up to 30 missiles and 700 military drones, targeting cities including Lviv, Lutsk, and Chernivtsi.