Russia and Ukraine traded attacks overnight, with seven killed on the Ukrainian side, authorities said on Thursday, shortly after US President Donald Trump’s envoy held talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg.
Trump sought to strike an optimistic tone after US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Putin on Wednesday, saying negotiators were “maybe now the closest we’ve been” to ending the war.
The Kremlin indicated it was “in principle” open to the resumption of trilateral talks involving the two sides and the United States.
But attacks did not let up in the wake of the visit.
Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people had been wounded in huge barrages of 630 drones fired towards the region, 163 of which were approaching the Russian capital.
The governor of nearby Tula region said Russian air defences had 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 region of Donetsk, authorities said.
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media strikes had wounded 15 people in the Ukrainian capital.
He said the strikes had damaged metro infrastructure at the Pivdenny Bridge, which officials said had restricted traffic between parts of the city.
Ukraine’s air force posted a warning in the early hours of “more ballistic missiles towards Kyiv” and instructed residents to stay in shelters.
Witkoff had flown to Russia from a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo on Tuesday, which was aimed at smoothing over a bitter rift between Trump and the Ukrainian leader.
Vanguard
