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A four-year-old boy and 76-year-old woman were among those killed in the Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr regions
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A four-year-old boy was among at least three people killed after Russia fired more than 650 drones and 30 missiles at Ukraine overnight, Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
Thirteen regions came under attack in total, Mr Zelensky said, adding that those killed were in the Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr regions.
A 76-year-old woman was killed in the attack on Kyiv, in which three people were injured, including a 16-year-old girl.
The attack also targeted energy infrastructure, particularly in Ukraine’s western regions, prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Mr Zelensky said the strike sends an “extremely clear signal about Russia’s priorities”, noting that it took place “in the midst of negotiations aimed at ending this war”. He urged Ukraine’s Western partners to increase pressure on Moscow.
During the attack, Poland has scrambled aircraft in the early hours of this morning as a “preventive” measure aimed at “securing and protecting the airspace”.
Russia’s major air attack came just hours after Volodymyr Zelensky warned Putin could strike hard over the festive period. Most parts of the war-hit nation were reported to be under air raid alerts.
Russian and US diplomats have held talks on removing “irritants” in the relations between the two countries, Moscow’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday.
But the main issues, he said according to news agency Interfax, remain unresolved.
Another round of such contacts is expected in early spring 2026, Ryabkov added.
The two countries have been discussing ways to resolve a series of disputes that have affected the working of each other’s embassies. The talks are separate from Russia-US negotiations over the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that its troops had captured the settlements of Prylipka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Andriivka in Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russian forces also struck energy and military facilities with Kinzhal missiles, the ministry added.
The Independent could not independently verify the reports of gains on the battlefield.
Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that several draft documents, including on security guarantees, had been prepared after Ukrainian officials held talks in Miami with US counterparts on ending Russia’s war.
“They worked productively with envoys of President Trump and several draft documents have now been prepared,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
“In particular, these include documents on security guarantees for Ukraine, on recovery, and on a basic framework for ending this war.”
Donald Trump has said peace talks between Ukraine and Russia are “going along”, but warned that “everybody is tired of that war”.
The US president was speaking at an event in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday. But he was sparing with any details on what has been discussed or agreed in the talks.
Asked by reporters for an update, Trump said: “The talks on Ukraine-Russia are going along. We are talking, the talks are going okay.”
He was then asked if he was still pushing for a Christmas deadline, according to The Kyiv Independent. He said: “I’ll whatever I have to do.”
Russia is reportedly developing a new anti-satellite weapon specifically designed to target Elon Musk’s Starlink constellation, according to intelligence findings from two Nato nations.
These reports, seen by The Associated Press, indicate the so-called “zone-effect” weapon aims to flood Starlink orbits with hundreds of thousands of high-density pellets.
Such a weapon could potentially disable multiple satellites at once, but it also carries the risk of catastrophic collateral damage to other orbiting systems. The alleged objective behind this development is to curb Western space superiority, which has played a crucial role in aiding Ukraine on the battlefield.
Read the full report:
An industrial facility is on fire in Russia’s southern Stavropol region after an overnight Ukrainian drone attack, officials said.
Regional governor Vladimir Vladimirov confirmed the attack but did not specify the details of the facility set ablaze in the attack. He said no injuries were reported.
Russian oil major Lukoil runs the Stavrolen petrochemical complex at Budyonnovsk in Stavropol and the region also hosts gas pipeline infrastructure and fuel storage sites that make it part of Russia’s broader energy and chemicals system.
Ukraine has previously carried out attacks on the Stavrolen plant before and said its attacks inside Russia are aimed at weakening Russia’s military effort in the ongoing war.
Local authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar region said on Tuesday that a fire at the fuel oil supply pipeline at the port of Taman had been extinguished.
It comes after a fire on an oil tanker and a pier, caused by a drone attack, was also extinguished on Monday, local authorities said.
The latest dialogue between Russian and the US officials in Miami on the war in Ukraine should not be seen as a breakthrough, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Calling it a “working process”, Vladimir Putin’s close aide said the discussions were expected to continue in a “meticulous” expert-level format and that Russia’s priority was to obtain from the United States details of Washington’s work with Europeans and Ukrainians on a possible settlement.
He said Moscow would then judge how far those ideas matched what he called the “spirit of Anchorage”.
Earlier, Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the talks were “productive and constructive”.
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