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KYIV: Russia targeted a US-founded electronics manufacturer near Ukraine’s border with the European Union in a major air attack on Thursday as President Volodymyr Zelensky sought US support to bring Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
The overnight attack, which included 574 drones and 40 missiles, was one of the largest of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, now in its fourth year.
One person was killed and 22 were wounded, most of them in the attack that damaged storage facilities at the electronics manufacturer in Ukraine’s far-Western Zakarpattia region, authorities said.
“It was a regular civilian business, supported by American investment, producing everyday items like coffee machines. And yet, it was also a target for the Russians,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“This is very telling.”
Mukachevo mayor Andriy Baloha said the damaged enterprise belonged to the US-listed company Flex Ltd. The corporate headquarters of the company, a global technology, supply chain and advanced manufacturing solutions partner, is in Austin, Texas and its registered office is in Singapore.
The company employed thousands of the area’s residents, Baloha said. Flex, which grew from a family firm founded in Silicon Valley in 1969, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, the attack killed one person, wounded three others and damaged 26 homes, said Governor Maksym Kozytskyi. Authorities in southeastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region also reported damage to businesses, homes and gas lines. Two industry sources told Reuters a key gas pumping facility had been attacked, without giving a location.
Russia said Putin had repeatedly said he was ready to meet Zelensky but that Ukraine was trying to undermine Trump’s efforts to resolve the conflict and its leader was illegitimate.
The defense ministry in Moscow said it had struck Ukrainian energy and airfield infrastructure as well as military industrial facilities overnight, and captured another frontline village — Oleksandro-Shultyne, Russian news agency RIA reported. Ukraine said it had hit a Russian oil refinery, a drone warehouse and a fuel base.
Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

SECURITY TALKS
US President Donald Trump met both Zelensky and Vladimir Putin over the past week in pursuit of a diplomatic end to the fighting but has acknowledged that his Russian counterpart may not want to make a deal. Zelensky urged Trump to react firmly if that was the case.
“We are ready. But what if the Russians are not ready?” he said in comments released on Thursday. “If the Russians are not ready, we would like to see a strong reaction from the United States.”
US and European military planners have begun exploring post-conflict security guarantees for Ukraine, according to US officials and sources, but the path to peace remained uncertain.
A defense ministry source in Turkiye, which has opposed sanctions on Russia while also giving military help to Ukraine and joining a “Coalition of the Willing” to help it with post-conflict security, said peace was still far off.
“It is necessary to first secure a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, then determine the framework of a mission with a clear mandate, and clarify the extent to which each country will contribute,” the Turkish source said on condition of anonymity.
The Kremlin said Putin had discussed Ukraine with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, when Moscow also said attempts to resolve security issues without Russian involvement were a “road to nowhere.”
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready for an honest talk about security guarantees for Ukraine and accused Ukraine’s European backers of ‘adventurism’ by excluding Moscow from their discussions.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, has used missiles and drones to strike Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines throughout the war.
Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of February 2022. More than a million Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded.

KYIV: Ukraine will hold intensive meetings to understand what kind of security guarantees its allies are willing to provide after receiving signals that the United States would back reinvigorated discussions seeking an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The details are being hammered out among national security advisers and military officials and Zelensky thinks they will take clearer shape within 10 days. He then expects to be ready to hold direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time since the full-scale invasion.
The talks could also be conducted in a trilateral format alongside US President Donald Trump, Zelensky said.
“We want to have an understanding of the security guarantees architecture within seven to 10 days. And based on that understanding, we aim to hold a trilateral meeting. That was my logic,” Zelensky said, speaking to reporters Wednesday after his trip to Washington along with Europe’s top leaders.
“President Trump suggested a slightly different logic: a trilateral meeting through a bilateral one,” Zelensky said. “But then we all agreed that, in any case, we continue working on the security guarantees, establishing this approximate framework, similar to Article 5. And what we have today is political support for this.”
Article 5 is NATO’s common defense guarantee under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on them all.
A venue for the meeting is being discussed with Switzerland, Austria and Turkiye as possibilities, Zelensky added.
Kyiv still does not have clarity over what kind of support it can expect from allies. A coalition of more than 30 countries have in principle pledged to contribute to security guarantees but talks came to a standstill when the US remained ambivalent about its role.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said working on security arrangements in Ukraine without Moscow’s involvement would not work, according to state news agency RIA Novosti.
“We cannot agree with the fact that it is now proposed to resolve collective security issues without the Russian Federation. This will not work. We have already explained more than once that Russia does not overstate its interests, but we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly,” Lavrov said at a news conference Wednesday
Recent positive signals from Trump suggesting the US will support “Article 5-like” security guarantees and Ukraine’s hopes to join the European Union have reinvigorated those discussions, Zelensky said.
“Today we have a positive signal from America, from President Trump, from his team, that they will be participants in the security guarantees for Ukraine. And this opens up the possibility for other countries,” he added. “Now the general staff of key countries have already started talking about what they are ready for. And some countries that were not there will probably appear now.”
Turkiye vocalized its readiness to provide security along the Black Sea after Trump appeared open to the possibility of supporting security guarantees for Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Zelensky reiterated that Ukraine is ready to hold direct talks with Putin.
“And what if the Russians are not ready? The Europeans raised the issue. If the Russians are not ready, then we would like to see a strong reaction from the United States,” he said.
Ukraine previously has expressed hope that the US will punish Russia with more sanctions if it does not demonstrate a serious willingness to end the war.
Zelensky spoke positively about his meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday alongside Europe’s top leaders. He sought to convince Trump that the battlefield situation was not as bad for Ukraine as Putin portrayed.
Zelensky pointed to errors in the US map of the front line that he said showed Russia holding more territory than it actually does.
“President Trump was interested in hearing the details. We talked a lot about Donbas, about the East, what its importance is. I noted that if our military withdraws from this territory and it is occupied, then we will open the way to Kharkiv,” Zelensky said, adding that he showed Trump roads leading to Ukraine’s industrial center in Dnipropetrovsk.
“I noted to him that there are many important aspects here. If we are simply talking about withdrawing from the east, we cannot do this,” Zelensky said, noting that he believed Trump had understood him.