At least seven people were killed and 69 injured when two bridges were blown up in separate Russian regions bordering Ukraine ahead of planned peace talks.

A bipartisan pair of US senators met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday and urged stronger sanctions against Russia, while uncertainty swirls over whether the next round of peace talks will move ahead in the coming days.

The talks, proposed by President Vladimir Putin, have so far yielded the biggest prisoner exchange of the war - but no sense of any consensus on how to halt the fighting.