KYIV: Ukraine and the US are launching talks in Switzerland on ways to end the war, a Ukrainian negotiator said on Saturday, after Washington sent Kyiv a plan which accepts some of Moscow’s demands.
US President Donald Trump gave Kyiv less than a week to approve the 28-point plan to end the nearly four-year war war, which would see Ukraine ceding territory, cutting its army, and pledging to never join NATO.
“In the coming days in Switzerland we are launching consultations between senior officials of Ukraine and the United States on the possible parameters of a future peace agreement,” Rustem Umerov, who is on Ukraine’s negotiating team, wrote on social media.
“This is another stage of the dialogue that has been ongoing in recent days and is primarily aimed at aligning our vision for the next steps,” added Umerov, a former defense minister, who is now the Secretary of the Security Council.
He previously led a few rounds of negotiations with Russia in Turkiye, which yielded no breakthrough.
This time, Zelensky appointed his top aide, Andriy Yermak, to lead the team, according to a presidential decree.
The decree said the talks will also include “representatives of the Russian Federation.”
There were no immediate confirmation from Russia whether it would join the talks.
Ukraine, US launching talks in Switzerland on ways to end war
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Ukraine, US launching talks in Switzerland on ways to end war
- This time, Zelensky appointed his top aide, Andriy Yermak, to lead the team, according to a presidential decree
Mass shooting at a South African bar leaves 11 dead, including 3 children
- Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital
- The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl
CAPE TOWN: A mass shooting carried out Saturday by multiple suspects in an unlicensed bar near the South African capital left at least 11 people dead, police said. The victims included three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
Another 14 people were wounded and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the South African Police Services. Police didn’t give details on the ages of those who were injured or their conditions.
The shooting happened at a bar inside a hostel in the Saulsville township west of the administrative capital of Pretoria in the early hours of Saturday. Ten of the victims died at the scene and the 11th died at the hospital, police said.
The children killed were a 3-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl. Police said they were searching for three male suspects.
“We are told that at least three unknown gunmen entered this hostel where a group of people were drinking and they started randomly shooting,” police spokesperson Brig. Athlenda Mathe told national broadcaster SABC. She said the motive for the killings was not clear. The shootings happened at around 4.15 a.m., she said, but police were only alerted at 6 a.m.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, authorities say.
There have been several mass shootings at bars — sometimes called shebeens or taverns in South Africa — in recent years, including one that killed 16 people in the Johannesburg township of Soweto in 2022. On the same day, four people were killed in a mass shooting at a bar in another province.
Mathe said that mass shootings at unlicensed bars were becoming a serious problem and police had shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
Recent mass killings in South Africa have not been confined to bars, however. Police said 18 people were killed, 15 of them women, in mass shootings minutes apart at two houses on the same road in a rural part of Eastern Cape province in September last year.
Seven men were arrested for those shootings and face multiple charges of murder, while police recovered three AK-style assault rifles they believe were used in the shootings.
