Russia and Ukraine traded overnight attacks that left seven dead on the Ukrainian side, authorities said Thursday, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg.
Trump struck an optimistic tone after his envoy Steve Witkoff's meeting with Putin Wednesday, saying negotiators were "maybe now the closest we've been" to ending the war.
The Kremlin said it was open "in principle" to resuming trilateral talks involving the two sides and the United States.
But attacks did not cease after the visit.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people were wounded in barrages of 630 drones fired at the region, with 163 approaching the capital.
The governor of the nearby Tula region said Russian air defenses destroyed 70 drones. Another man was wounded in the Lipetsk region, its governor said.
In Ukraine, the attacks killed one man in Sumy and a woman in Kharkiv, both in the northeast, as well as three people in southeastern Zaporizhzhia and two in the eastern Donetsk region, authorities said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media strikes wounded 15 people in the capital.
He said the strikes damaged metro infrastructure at the Pivdenny Bridge, which officials said restricted traffic between parts of the city.
Ukraine's air force warned in the early hours of "more ballistic missiles toward Kyiv" and instructed residents to stay in shelters.
Witkoff flew to Russia from a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Oslo Tuesday, aimed at smoothing a bitter rift between Trump and the Ukrainian leader.
Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner also took part in the talks with Putin remotely.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters Russia was "in principle" ready to resume trilateral talks in mid-November – after the U.S. midterm elections – and that the Kremlin wanted them to focus on postwar security.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine also backed resuming trilateral talks.
'Work left to do'
Ushakov said Witkoff briefed Putin on "some new aspects in the approaches of the Europeans and Kyiv" from the Oslo meeting but added that "there wasn't really much substance in them."
Ushakov also said a summit between Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was in preparation in Shenzhen, China, for next month, calling it "the first such meeting in history."
During their three-hour meeting, Witkoff praised Putin for granting Trump's request to free U.S. citizen Stephen Hubbard, a retired English teacher in his 70s who was detained for fighting for Ukraine – charges he denied.
"You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian – you are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that," Witkoff said.
Witkoff said on social media the talks with Putin were "constructive," adding that "there is still important work left to do." Discussions would continue between the United States, Ukraine and Russia at the technical level, he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025 promising to end the war in 24 hours – but more than a year of U.S.-led talks have failed to produce a breakthrough.
In recent days, a frustrated Trump once again pivoted away from Ukraine and back to Putin, touting what he called a deal for Russia to sell diesel and reduce prices sent soaring by the Iran war.
Trump also delayed the imposition of sanctions on Russia's war effort – a decision he defended Wednesday as necessary to secure Hubbard's release.
"If you had put those sanctions on ... you could forget about him; you'd never see him again," Trump told reporters at the White House.
Witkoff told Putin Washington was "grateful" for the diesel deal, which sparked outrage in Kyiv and across Europe.
The war, Europe's worst since World War II, has killed tens of thousands of people since Russia's February 2022 invasion.
Putin has consistently rejected face-to-face talks with Zelenskyy and insisted Moscow intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine.