US wants Ukraine to hold elections following potential ceasefire, Trump envoy says

The US wants Ukraine to hold presidential and parliamentary elections, a special envoy to President Donald Trump has said.

Keith Kellogg, Mr Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said the elections could take place by the end of the year, especially if a truce with Russia was reached, but added such votes "need to be done".

"Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so," Mr Kellogg told the Reuters news agency.

He added: "I think it is good for democracy. That's the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running."

It comes as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that excluding Ukraine from US-Russia talks could be "very dangerous".

"They [Russia and US] may have their own relations, but talking about Ukraine without us - it is dangerous for everyone," Mr Zelenskyy said.

Before being elected, Mr Trump claimed he could end Russia's war in Ukraine in just one day.

Both Mr Trump and Mr Kellogg have said they are working on a plan to broker a deal to bring to an end the fighting Russia started with its all-out invasion in February 2022.

They have offered scant details about such a plan, nor any timescale for its implementation.

Mr Kellogg and other White House officials have discussed pushing Ukraine to agree to elections as part of any initial truce with Russia, according to two people with knowledge of those conversations, Reuters also reported.

Other Eastern European nations that have held elections in recent months and years have seen allegations of interference from Russia.

It isn't clear how Mr Trump's plan would be received within Ukraine.

President Zelenskyy previously said Ukraine could hold elections this year if the fighting ends and strong security guarantees are in place to deter Russia from renewing hostilities.

Mr Zelenskyy's five-year term was supposed to end in 2024 but presidential and parliamentary elections cannot be held under martial law - which Ukraine imposed in February 2022.

According to two former senior US officials, Washington raised the issue of elections with officials inside Mr Zelenskyy's office in 2023 and 2024.

Officials within Kyiv have pushed back on election conversations with Washington before the most recent election, telling Biden officials that holding votes at such a volatile moment risks weakening Ukraine and potentially inviting Russian influence campaigns.

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Amid ongoing questions over any potential end to the conflict, the fighting itself continues.

Ukraine's military said on Saturday that Russian forces had struck a dormitory housing people preparing for evacuation in a part of Russia's Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces.

The military's general staff issued a statement saying that a Russian guided or glide bomb had hit the dormitory in the town of Sudzha, on the Ukrainian border, in the late afternoon.

Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, a Ukrainian military spokesman, had earlier said in a video posted on Facebook that nearly 100 people were under rubble at the site and that moans and cries had been heard.

He added the building had mostly been housing elderly and infirm people.

Elsewhere, a Russian drone and missile strike on Ukraine on Saturday killed 12 people and damaged dozens of residential buildings, as well as energy infrastructure, officials said.

The majority of these deaths, eight of them, took place in the central city of Poltava, Ukraine's emergency services said.

One person was also killed in Kharkiv in a drone attack, and three police officers were killed while patrolling the streets of a village in the northeastern Sumy region.

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