Russia attacks Ukraine with massive drone and missile attack amid diplomatic talks

Russia unleashed a major barrage of missiles and drones against Ukraine overnight Saturday after U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they would meet Saturday for a meeting. third day of talks intended to end a nearly four-year war.

Russia used 653 drones and 51 missiles in the wide-range strike, which triggered airstrike alerts across the country and came as Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day, the country’s air force said Saturday morning.

Ukrainian forces shot down and neutralized 585 drones and 30 missiles, the air force said, adding that 29 locations were hit.

At least eight people were wounded in the attacks, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

Among them, at least three people were injured in the kyiv region, according to local officials. Drone sightings have been reported as far west as Ukraine’s Lviv region.

Russia carried out ‘massive guided missile attack’ on power plants, others energy infrastructure in several regions of Ukraine, Ukraine’s national energy operator Ukrenergo wrote on Telegram.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine temporarily lost all external power overnight, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday, citing its director general Rafael Mariano Grossi.

The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incident.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said energy facilities were the main targets of the attacks, noting that a drone strike had “set fire” to the train station in the city of Fastiv, located in the kyiv region.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses had shot down 116 ukrainian drones over Russian territory during Saturday night.

Russian Telegram news channel Astra said Ukraine attacked the Ryazan oil refinery in Russia and shared images that appeared to show a fire and plumes of smoke rising above the refinery. The News could not independently verify the video.

Ukraine did not immediately comment on the alleged attack. Ryazan Regional Governor Pavel Malkov said a residential building had been damaged in a drone strike and that the wreckage of the plane had fallen on the grounds of an “industrial facility”, but did not mention the refinery.

Months of Ukrainian long-range drone attacks on Russian refineries have aimed to deprive Moscow from oil export revenues the war needs to continue. Meanwhile, kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple Ukraine’s power grid and deny civilians access to heat, electricity and running water for the fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing the cold.”

The latest round of attacks came as U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisers and Ukrainian officials said they will meet Saturday for a third day of talks after making progress in finding an agreement on a security framework for postwar Ukraine.

After Friday’s talks, the two sides also offered the sober assessment that any “real progress toward any agreement” will ultimately depend “on Russia’s willingness to show a serious commitment to long-term peace.”

The statement from US special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov, came after they met for a second day in Florida on Friday. They offered only broad strokes of the progress they say has been made as Trump pressures kyiv and Moscow to accept a deal. Proposal mediated by the United States end almost four years of war.