Russia fires 21 missiles at Kyiv hours after agreeing to resume peace talks

Russia launched a large overnight missile attack on Kyiv just hours after the Kremlin said Vladimir Putin had agreed in principle to resume three-way peace negotiations with Ukraine and the United States.

Ukrainian officials said at least two people were killed and 22 wounded in the capital, among them four children. The targets included the southern bridge over the Dnipro River, homes, energy facilities, an ambulance station, office buildings and a monastery. Twelve regions across Ukraine were hit, including the southern port city of Odesa, where the port suffered heavy damage.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack, which came in three waves of ballistic missiles through Wednesday evening and the early hours of Thursday, showed that Moscow had not changed course. “Almost immediately after another round of talks, Russia launched a pointed attack,” he said. “This means there has been no real change in its attitude toward everything that is happening.”

Talks in St Petersburg

The strikes followed a meeting on Wednesday in St Petersburg between Mr Putin and Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, who travelled to Russia after talks with Mr Zelensky and Nordic leaders in Oslo earlier in the week.

After the meeting, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said Mr Putin had agreed “in principle” to restart trilateral talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the US after 10 November – a week after the US midterm elections. During the session Mr Putin also ordered the release of a jailed American.

Mr Witkoff praised the Russian leader across the table. “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that,” he said.

In a social media post after the overnight strikes, Mr Zelensky responded pointedly. “Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian ‘humanitarians’ since yesterday evening. They used 21 missiles,” he wrote.

Kyiv calls for air defence

Mr Zelensky thanked western partners who, he said, saw “the situation for what it is” and called for more air defence systems, more Patriot interceptor missiles and tougher sanctions on Russia. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that “appeasement, servility and flattery” would not stop Russian attacks.

Officials in Kyiv believe Moscow is trying to destroy as much of Ukraine’s energy system as possible before winter, leaving millions of people without heat and light. Russia has said its strikes target military and military-linked infrastructure, and it denies deliberately attacking civilians.

What Russia says

Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences had shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones overnight. Local authorities in Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said one man was killed and another wounded in a Ukrainian aerial strike.

Moscow has repeatedly said it is open to a negotiated settlement but that any agreement must take account of what it calls “the realities on the ground” – a reference to the Ukrainian territory its forces occupy. Kyiv says it will not accept a deal that rewards the invasion.

Strain between Washington and Kyiv

The attack comes amid the most serious disagreement between the US and Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It began after President Trump said he was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel to bring down US fuel prices, a move Mr Zelensky described as “weak”.

Mr Zelensky said the US had now resumed sharing intelligence warnings about incoming Russian missiles. However, Washington has not reversed a slowdown of Starshield, the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service. According to The New York Times, dozens of Ukrainian armed drones heading for Russian military targets dropped out of the sky when the connection was cut last week.

The Trump administration denies it is deliberately helping Russia and says its aim is to bring both sides to the table. Some European diplomats, however, have privately questioned whether Washington is still acting as an even-handed mediator.

Underground counter-attack

Separately, details emerged of an unusual Ukrainian operation near Kupiansk, in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, which Russian forces partly occupy. The Khartia corps said its soldiers had crawled around 15km through tunnels – without GPS, communications or light – to reach positions behind Russian lines.

“The Russians intended to use gas pipelines to infiltrate the rear of our forces. So, we went underground ourselves,” the corps commander, Brig Gen Ihor Obolenskyi, told Ukrainian media. The unit said about 100 Russian soldiers were killed and 30 captured. Russia has not commented on the claim, and it could not be independently verified.

What happens next

Any new round of talks is not expected before mid-November. In the meantime, Ukraine is preparing for a winter in which repeated strikes on power stations and substations could cause long blackouts in Kyiv and other cities.

For European governments, including the UK, the latest strikes raise the question of whether they will need to supply more air defence equipment themselves, as uncertainty grows over the level of support coming from Washington.