Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday renewed his offer to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, as delegations from both governments prepared to hold a third round of direct talks.

Russian forces, meanwhile, pounded three Ukrainian cities in nighttime attacks that officials said killed a child. Putin has spurned Zelenskyy’s previous offers of a face-to-face meeting to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. 

But the Ukrainian leader insists that lower-level delegations like the ones expected for talks in Istanbul today don’t have the political heft to stop the fighting, when each side’s demands on ending Russia’s full-scale invasion — launched on February 24, 2022 — of its neighbor remain so far apart.