Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said negotiators were making "good progress" with the United States in fraught talks over a minerals deal intended to secure desperately needed US support.
"The basic legal stuff is almost finalised, and then, if everything moves as quickly and constructively, the agreement will bring economic results to both our countries," Mr Zelensky said in his daily address.
Ukraine and the US had planned to sign a deal on extracting Ukraine's strategic minerals, until a clash between US President Donald Trump and Mr Zelensky in February temporarily derailed work on the agreement.
Mr Trump wants the deal - designed to give the US royalty payments on profits from Ukrainian mining of resources and rare minerals - as compensation for aid given to Ukraine by his predecessor, Joe Biden.
"The Ukrainian government team working with the US side on the economic partnership agreement is making good progress," Mr Zelensky said.
He pointed to an update provided by economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko who earlier said "significant progress" had been made in the talks.
She said Ukrainian officials had "adjusted several items within the draft agreement" and that the two sides would sign a "memorandum of intent" soon.
The Ukrainian parliament would vote on any final accord, she added.
A senior official with knowledge of the negotiations said talks were moving forward "quite fast".
The source told AFP that newer drafts of the accord appeared not to recognise US aid as a debt owed by Ukraine.
That assessment echoed an earlier report by Bloomberg News that said the US had eased a demand that Ukraine pay back aid delivered since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
It reported that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said on Monday that a deal could be signed as early as "this week".
Russia targets civilian infrastructure in Odesa strike
A Russian drone attack on the Black Sea port city of Odesa overnight injured three people, sparked fires and damaged homes and civilian infrastructure, officials of the southern Ukrainian region have said.
"The enemy has again attacked Odesa with a massive drone attack," Oleh Kiper, governor of the region whose administrative centre is the city of Odesa, said on messaging app Telegram, though the full scale of the attack was not clear.
Ukraine's air force usually reports details of overnight Russian attacks later in the morning.
In a Telegram post, Ukraine's emergency service said three people were injured and several fires broke out in the city as a result of the attack.
Odesa's mayor, Hennadiy Trukhanov, posted photographs depicting a residential building and other structures that had been nearly destroyed, while in others emergency workers sifted rubble and a dog peered from behind a pile of wood.
Russia's defence ministry meanwhile said it had destroyed 26 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Nine of the drones were destroyed over the southern Voronezh region and eight over the border Belgorod region, it said.
It added in a post on Telegram that the rest were downed over the Kursk, Lipetsk and Moscow regions, and over the Crimean Peninsula.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia started with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
Late in March, the United States said it had reached separate deals with Ukraine and Russia to pause their attacks over the Black Sea and against each other's energy targets.
Both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
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