Smoke rises after an attack by the Russian army in Odessa, on April 3, 2022. (BULENT KILIC / AFP)
KIEV – Ukraine has regained control of the "whole Kiev region," Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Hanna Maliar said on Facebook on Saturday.
Ukraine has retaken "Irpin, Bucha, Gostomel and the whole Kiev region," said Maliar.
The Russian military continues to carry out systematic missile and aviation strikes on targets in Ukraine, but the intensity has decreased, said the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Ukraine is spending spends about $10 billion a month on the conflict with Russia, the presidential press service said Saturday
Additional units of the Russian military are preparing to participate in combat in Ukraine, it added.
The draft agreements that were discussed during the meeting in Istanbul this week are now ready for discussion by the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, head of the Ukrainian delegation David Arakhamia said Saturday.
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The draft has been "developed enough to conduct direct consultations between the two leaders of the countries," Arakhamia was quoted by Interfax-Ukraine news agency as saying.
"Our task is to prepare the final stage not of the document itself, but of those issues that we touched upon, and to prepare the future meeting of the presidents," he said.
Ukraine's government-run Ukrinform news agency confirmed on Friday that the two sides have started the next round of peace talks via video, citing a member of the Ukrainian delegation Mykhailo Podolyak.
Russia and Ukraine held their latest round of face-to-face peace talks in Turkey's Istanbul on Tuesday, which lasted for about three hours.
Odessa
Early on Sunday, explosions rocked Ukraine's southern Black Sea port city of Odessa as the city came under an airstrike, the Operation Command South, a formation of the Ukrainian Ground Forces in southern Ukraine, said on Facebook.
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The attacks hit the city's infrastructure. Some of the missiles were intercepted by the air defense.
According to preliminary data, there were no reports of casualties from the strikes.
Smoke has been rising in various districts of the city.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the Russian Armed Forces have destroyed an oil refinery and three storage facilities for fuel and lubricants near Odessa with high-precision sea- and air-based missiles.
The facilities supply fuel to a group of Ukrainian troops in the Mykolaiv direction, Konashenkov said Sunday during a briefing.
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Meanwhile, Ukraine is spending spends about $10 billion a month on the conflict with Russia, the presidential press service said Saturday.
"The Ukrainian state spends about 10 billion dollars a month on hostilities," reads a statement on the Ukrainian presidential website, citing data from the Ministry of Finance.
Among Ukraine's sources of expenditure financing, the statement named the country's own tax revenues and assistance from Ukraine's international partners.
The military conflict between Ukraine and Russia started on Feb 24.
