KYIV: Russia pounded Kyiv with ballistic missiles and Ukraine sent hundreds of drones towards Moscow overnight as the warring sides kept up a barrage of attacks despite the latest US push to end the conflict.
Russia said on Wednesday it was ready to resume US-mediated talks with Ukraine next month, after President Vladimir Putin hosted US envoy Steve Witkoff for talks in St Petersburg.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he hoped negotiations, which would be the first since February, would take place early in November.
Ukraine said Russia fired at least 21 ballistic missiles in three waves, and Zelenskiy said three of them carried cluster munitions — “bomblets” that disperse over a wide area and are banned by many countries because of the danger they pose to civilians. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russia said Ukraine launched 630 drones towards Moscow during the night.
The two sides held an exchange of war dead, with Moscow handing over 252 bodies and Ukraine handing over 25, according to the Belta state news agency in neighbouring Belarus. Such exchanges have accompanied moves towards talks in the past.
But while Witkoff spoke of “some degree of momentum” after meeting Zelenskiy and European and NATO officials in Oslo earlier in the week, the Kremlin expressed doubts.
“The Americans sensed some new nuances (in Oslo) and told us about this. But these nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
A senior Russian official, briefed on the results of the Putin-Witkoff talks, said they were relatively short and not substantive. The American brought a set of proposals drafted in Oslo and handed them to Putin for review, the person said.
Another source close to the Kremlin said the US proposals included a scenario where Ukraine would cede all of its Donbas region to Russia in return for receiving a guarantee of its future security from NATO.
Russia says it launched the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two, in part to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. It has repeatedly said it would not end fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, limits the size of its forces and is permanently barred from forming alliances.
Ukraine, which says the invasion was an unprovoked war of conquest, has long dismissed Russia’s conditions as a demand for capitulation that would leave it defenceless against future Russian attacks.
US praise for ‘humanitarian’ Putin goes down badly with Kyiv
Zelenskiy’s meeting with Witkoff was aimed in part at smoothing over a deterioration in relations with Washington this month, after President Donald Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel and lifted sanctions on Moscow.
Kyiv says Washington failed to provide early-warning data on Russian missile launches, throttled the SpaceX satellite system used to guide Ukrainian drones, and withheld missile defence systems bought on its behalf by Europeans. Washington denies any shift in policy to intentionally hamper Ukraine’s forces.
Trump has repeatedly rebuked Ukraine for attacking Russian oil refineries while saying little about far deadlier Russian attacks on Ukraine. He called for Zelenskiy to be replaced and said Russia’s actions in Ukraine have been “fine”.
Zelenskiy, who long avoided any criticism of the Trump administration, has increasingly pushed back against what he describes as a shift towards sympathy with Moscow.
On Thursday Zelenskiy snapped back at Witkoff for saluting Putin as a “humanitarian” during his visit to Russia, when the US envoy thanked Putin for releasing a 74-year-old American captured by Russian forces in Ukraine.
“Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian ‘humanitarians’ since yesterday evening,” Zelenskiy posted on X. “They used 21 missiles. Unfortunately, numerous sites across the city have been hit and damaged.”
He said 2 people were killed and 34 injured, including 5 children, in attacks on a dozen Ukrainian regions.
Russia said it carried out a “massive strike” overnight on port infrastructure in Ukraine’s Odesa region, as well as on vessels used by the Ukrainian military.
In Russia, two people were wounded near Moscow by drones launched towards the capital during the night, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Telegram. Most of the drones were downed at long range, he added.
In the Russian border region of Belgorod, one man was killed and another wounded by Ukrainian drones, local officials said.
With the frontlines of the war largely static, both sides have escalated long-range air strikes this year. Russia has particularly targeted the Ukrainian power grid, while Ukraine has aimed at Russian oil refineries. Both have struck data centres, commercial warehouses and Black Sea shipping.
The war has ground on for more than 4-1/2 years, defying Trump’s pledge during his 2024 election campaign that he could end it in a day. No breakthrough emerged from three short meetings in Istanbul last year and three rounds of US-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva at the start of this year.