The U.K. Ministry of Defense said that officials addressed the structure, size and composition of any future “reassurance force,” while the chief of the defense staff, Adm. Antony Radakin, emphasized that the U.K. would look to “build on the formidable capabilities of the Ukrainian army and put them in the strongest possible position to deter Russian aggression.”

The weekend discussions are planned to set the ground for a further meeting between defense ministers in Brussels and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday.

Britain has been promoting the idea of a European-led peacekeeping force for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire but it has said such a force needed a U.S. “backstop” to make it credible in the face of possible Russian reprisals.

Building a force big enough to act as a credible deterrent — U.K. officials have talked about possibly 10,000 to 30,000 troops — would be a considerable effort for nations that shrank their militaries after the Cold War but are now rearming.

Trump, who has been pushing for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, temporarily paused military aid to Kyiv and has repeatedly said that the country will never join the NATO military alliance.

Death toll from from Friday’s strike rises to 18

The death toll from a Russian missile strike in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih has risen to 18, including nine children, regional Governor Serhii Lysak said Saturday.

A further 72 people were injured in Friday’s attack, the youngest a 3-month-old. About half of them remained in the hospital, with 17 in serious condition.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

Kryvyi Rih is Zelenskyy’s hometown.

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings — hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Friday that it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting with unit commanders and Western instructors was taking place.

Russian military claimed that the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

Russian forces launched 92 drones into Ukraine overnight, with 51 shot down by air defenses, the Ukrainian air force wrote on social media Saturday. A further 31 decoy drones also failed to reach their targets, it said.

Elsewhere, one person died Saturday in the Russian-occupied town of Horlivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region due to shelling, Moscow-installed Gov. Denis Pushilin said. Security officials told Russian state news channels that they had destroyed 28 Ukrainian drones over the Donetsk region overnight, marking the first time that the occupied territory had been targeted by such long-range strikes.

Zelenskyy criticizes US ambassador’s response

Zelenskyy blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defenses.

He also criticized the response of the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to the strike. Ambassador Bridget A. Brink posted on social media Friday that she was “horrified” by the strike in Kryvyi Rih. “More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6 children. This is why the war must end,” the post said.

Zelenskyy, who has so far had a strained relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, described the post as “unpleasantly surprising” for not directly naming Russia as the perpetrator of the attack.

“Such a strong country, such a strong people — and such a weak reaction. They are even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed children,” he said in a post that also praised countries including Japan, Britain, Switzerland and Germany for their “principled statements.”

“Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade,” he said.

At least 18 people are dead and 61 wounded after a Russian ballistic missile strike hit a central Ukrainian city on Friday, Ukrainian officials said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — On the surface, the turmoil in Russia would seem like something for the U.S. to celebrate: a powerful mercenary group engaging in a short-lived clash with Russia’s military at the very moment that Ukraine is trying to gain momentum in a critical counteroffensive.

But the public response by Washington has been decidedly cautious. Officials say the U.S. had no role in the conflict, insist this was an internal matter for Russia and decline to comment on whether it could affect the war in Ukraine. The reason: to avoid creating an opening for Russian President Vladimir Putin to seize on the rhetoric of American officials and rally Russians by blaming his Western adversaries.

Even President Joe Biden, known for straying from talking points, has stayed on script.

Biden told reporters Monday that the United States and NATO weren’t involved. Biden said he held a video call with allies over the weekend and they are all in sync in working to ensure that they give Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West” or NATO.

“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”

Biden and administration officials declined to give an immediate assessment of what the 22-hour uprising by the Wagner Group might mean for Russia’s war in Ukraine, for mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin or for Russia itself.

“We’re going to keep assessing the fallout of this weekend’s events and the implications from Russia and Ukraine,” Biden said. “But it’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”

Putin, in his first public comments since the rebellion, said “Russia’s enemies” had hoped the mutiny would succeed in dividing and weakening Russia, “but they miscalculated.” He identified the enemies as “the neo-Nazis in Kyiv, their Western patrons and other national traitors.”

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia was investigating whether Western intelligence services were involved in Prigozhin’s rebellion.

Over the course of a tumultuous weekend in Russia, U.S. diplomats were in contact with their counterparts in Moscow to underscore that the American government regarded the matter as a domestic affair for Russia, with the U.S. only a bystander, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that Putin in the past has alleged clandestine U.S. involvement in events — including democratic uprisings in former Soviet countries, and campaigns by democracy activists inside and outside Russia — as a way to diminish public support among Russians for those challenges to the Russian system.

The U.S. and NATO “don’t want to be blamed for the appearance of trying to destabilize Putin,” McFaul said.

A feud between the Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and Russia’s military brass that has festered throughout the war erupted into the mutiny that saw the mercenaries leave Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city. They rolled for hundreds of kilometers toward Moscow, before turning around on Saturday, in a deal whose terms remain uncertain.

Biden’s national security team briefed him hourly as Prigozhin’s forces were on the move, the president said. He said he had directed them to “prepare for a range of scenarios” as Russia’s crisis unfolded.

Biden did not elaborate on the scenarios. But national security spokesman John Kirby addressed one concern raised frequently as the world watched the cracks opening in Putin’s hold on power — worries that the Russian leader might take extreme action to reassert his command.

Putin and his lieutenants have made repeated references to Russia’s nuclear weapons since invading Ukraine 16 months ago, aiming to discourage NATO countries from increasing their support to Ukraine.

“One thing that we have always talked about, unabashedly so, is that it’s in nobody’s interest for this war to escalate beyond the level of violence that is already visited upon the Ukrainian people,” Kirby said at a White House news briefing. “It’s not good for, certainly, Ukraine and not good for our allies and partners in Europe. Quite frankly, it’s not good for the Russian people.”

Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend, telling him, ”’No matter what happened in Russia, let me say again, no matter what happened in Russia, we in the United States would continue to support Ukraine’s defense and sovereignty and its territorial integrity.” Biden said.

The Pentagon is expected to announce Tuesday that it is sending up to $500 million in additional military aid to Ukraine, including more than 50 heavily armored vehicles and an infusion of missiles for air defense systems, U.S. officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid had not yet been publicly announced.

Biden, in the first weeks after Putin sent tens of thousands of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022, had issued a passionate statement against the Russian leader’s continuing in command. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said then, as reports emerged of Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukraine.

On Monday, U.S. officials were careful not to be seen as backing either Putin or his former longtime protege, Prigozhin, in public comments.

“We believe it’s up to the Russian people to determine who their leadership is,” Kirby said.

White House officials were also trying to understand how Beijing was digesting the Wagner revolt and what it might mean for the China-Russia relationship going forward. China and Russia are each other’s closest major partner. The White House says Beijing has considered — but not followed through on — sending Russia weaponry for use in Ukraine.

“I think it’d be fair to say that recent developments in Russia had been unsettling to the Chinese leadership,” said Kurt Campbell, coordinator for the Indo-Pacific at the White House National Security Council, speaking at a forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “I think I’ll just leave it at that.”

China values Russia as a friend in part to keep from standing alone against the U.S. and its allies in disputes. With Russia’s invasion and resulting international sanctions sapping Russian resources and now sparking a rebellion, McFaul said, Ukraine and its allies could make the case: ”’Xi Jinping, you know, if you want your buddy to stay in power, maybe this is the time to put some pressure on him to wrap up this war.‴

___

AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

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