Russia and Ukraine trade drone barrages hours after Witkoff-Putin meeting
At least seven people were killed across Ukraine and one in Russia's Belgorod region as both sides exchanged drone and missile barrages overnight, hours after US envoy Steve Witkoff concluded talks with Vladimir Putin on restarting peace negotiations.
Ukraine and Russia exchanged a flurry of drone and missile attacks overnight, leaving at least seven dead across Ukraine and one person killed in south-western Russia, officials in both countries said on Thursday morning.
Authorities in the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said a man was killed when a Ukrainian drone crashed into the truck he was driving. In a separate strike in the region, a man riding a motorcycle was wounded. Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said 630 Ukrainian drones had been tracked in the skies above the wider Moscow region overnight, with air defence systems intercepting 163 of the aircraft on a direct approach to the city. Two people were wounded in the Voronovo district, south-west of central Moscow.
There were also reports of an explosion and fire south of the capital. The exiled news outlet Astra, using eyewitness footage of the blaze, identified the targeted facility as a storage and logistics site belonging to the Russian defence ministry's main missile and artillery directorate, located in Serpukhov. The Moscow Times could not independently verify those reports.
Russia's defence ministry said it intercepted 808 Ukrainian drones across Russia and annexed Crimea between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Russian officials reported injuries in the border region of Kursk amid the overnight air barrage. Residential buildings in the Lipetsk region were also damaged, and power lines were knocked down in the Voronezh and Kaluga regions.
In Ukraine, Russian attacks killed at least seven people across the country, including three in Zaporizhzhia, two in Donetsk, one in Sumy and a woman in the Kharkiv region. The bombardment came as Moscow's unprovoked assault on its neighbour grinds through another year, with civilians across Ukraine again paying the price.
The exchange of attacks came just hours after the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, concluded talks with President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on renewing trilateral peace negotiations that have stalled since February. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that Kyiv supported a US proposal for three-way talks with Moscow and Washington. The Kremlin said Putin had agreed to resume the US-mediated talks as early as next month.