Talks resume amid reports of Ukraine casualties, fire in Russia

Moscow [Russia], February 18: The Russia-Ukraine air war continued on Tuesday as the latest round of negotiations between the warring sides, mediated by the United States, kicked off in Geneva.
Civil defence authorities said three people were killed and another injured in a drone attack on a civilian car in the city of Mykolaivka in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. According to Ukrainian media, citing the Energy Ministry, the car was carrying employees of the Sloviansk thermal power plant.
In the Sumy region in northern Ukraine, a 68-year-old woman was killed in a Russian drone attack, according to the regional prosecutor's office. Her two grandchildren, aged 7 and 15, as well as their parents, were said to have been injured.
In the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, three people were injured, one of them seriously, military administration chief Serhiy Lysak said.
According to the electricity supplier DTEK, Russian attacks once again hit the energy supply of the Odessa region. The destruction was described as extraordinarily severe, and the supplier said the repairs would take a long time.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said tens of thousands of people in Odessa were left without heating and water supplies. He said the massive Russian attacks, which targeted 12 regions and used nearly 400 drones and 29 missiles, including ballistic ones, were "deliberately calculated to cause as much damage as possible to [Ukraine's] energy sector."
The Ukrainian military, in turn, targeted sites in Russia. According to the civil protection staff of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia, a fire broke out in Ilsky on an area of around 700 square metres in an oil refinery following a drone attack.
Source: Qatar Tribune