Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said that the Ukrainian government aims to hold a peace summit by the end of next February, while Moscow refused to conduct negotiations at the United Nations on Ukraine's terms, and demanded that it disarm and get rid of what it described as the Nazis.
Kuleba added - in an interview with the Associated Press - that he would prefer that the summit be at the United Nations with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as a possible mediator, again accusing Russia of not wanting peace.
He said that all wars end in a diplomatic way, and are the result of developments on the battlefield and dialogue at the negotiating table.
Russia reference
On the other hand, the Russian presidency rejected the possibility of negotiations at the United Nations on Ukraine's terms, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that his country never follows the conditions of others in negotiating, stressing that Russia's reference is its own goals and common sense.
Meanwhile, the Russian news agency TASS quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying that Ukraine knows Moscow's demands regarding disarmament and getting rid of what he described as the Nazis, and warned that if Kyiv did not meet these demands, the Russian army would take over the matter.
Lavrov had said earlier that "the West's ability to lead the global economy is greatly diminished, which will force it in the end to negotiate with Russia, whether it be willing or not."
Infrastructure targeting
In field affairs, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 9 million Ukrainians have become without electricity as a result of Russian strikes on the country's infrastructure, warning that Russian forces will attack Ukraine's electricity grid again.
Zelensky added, in his daily videotaped speech on Monday evening, that the Russians are pressing with all their capabilities and resources in the Donas region, to achieve what he described as some progress on those fronts.
He said that the situation in Bakhmut, Kremina and other regions of Donbass is "difficult and painful", and requires maximum strength and focus.
Drone attack
The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that its air defense systems had thwarted an attack by a Ukrainian drone on the Engels military base, southeast of the capital, Moscow. The ministry said that 3 Russian soldiers were killed as a result of the falling wreckage of the drone.
In the Donetsk axis, the Russian forces continued their attacks, and the Russian Ministry of Defense announced the killing of 40 Ukrainian soldiers in attacks by its forces on the southern axis of the city of Donetsk.
The ministry's spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said that the Russian forces destroyed workshops to repair the weapons of the Ukrainian army in the city of Kramatorsk, east of the Donbass region, and added that the total losses of Ukraine within one day amounted to about 100 soldiers, with the destruction of several vehicles.
Russian losses
On the other hand, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that 50 Russian soldiers were killed and 100 others were wounded, in addition to the destruction of 5 various units of military equipment, in a bombing it launched in Kherson Province, in the south of the country.
The Ukrainian General Staff added that its forces bombed, during the past hours, control points and areas where Russian forces were stationed on more than one front.
It said that the Russian forces carried out during the past hours 19 attacks from missile systems, considering that there are increasing threats of the risk of carrying out Russian missile attacks on the entire Ukrainian territory.
Donbass front
In the Donbass region, Al-Jazeera correspondent reported that Russian bombing targeted Kramatorsk and Slaviansk, which are under the control of the Ukrainian army, and the bombing of Kramatorsk targeted a heavy machinery factory.
Meanwhile, the governor of the Luhansk region of the Ukrainian Donbass region, Sergei Gaidai, said that his country's forces had not yet controlled the city of Kremina, but the fighting had come very close to its center, adding that the Russian army did not have the ability to attack from different axes there.
For its part, the Ukrainian Operations Command in the Luhansk Front said that the Russian forces and the separatist forces destroyed all the passages and bridges on the Donetsk River and kept only one bridge, adding that the destruction process comes in response to the progress made by the Ukrainian forces in the fighting axes.
In the Liman-Kopiansk axis, the Ukrainian army said that the Russian army targeted cities and towns on that axis, and the Air Force also carried out sorties, which it called successful, targeting sites for gathering infantry units and stores for weapons of the Russian forces.
In the context, Al-Jazeera correspondent in Bakhmut reported that Ukrainian military reinforcements arrived in the city at a time when the spokesman for the Ukrainian Eastern Front said that the Russian army was preparing to carry out a counterattack in Bakhmut, Luhansk and Avdiivka, adding that the Ukrainian army took all precautions in these areas.