Strikes Hit Kyiv After Kremlin Signals Openness to Talks
Hours after the Kremlin said it was open "in principle" to new peace talks, Russian missiles and drones hit Kyiv overnight into Thursday. Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the strikes wounded 15 people in the Ukrainian capital. The attack followed a meeting on Wednesday in Saint Petersburg between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Steve Witkoff, the US envoy, about restarting talks mediated by the United States.
Eight of the wounded in Kyiv needed hospital treatment, and strikes damaged metro infrastructure at the Pivdenny Bridge, restricting traffic. Authorities said Russian attacks also killed people in Sumy and Kharkiv in the northeast, in Zaporizhzhia and in Donetsk. Ukraine also attacked: Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said 630 drones headed towards the Moscow region, 163 of them towards the capital, and most were intercepted; two people were wounded. Witkoff's three-hour talk with Putin was his ninth meeting with the Russian leader.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Ukrainian and European proposals had little "substance". Putin rejects face-to-face talks with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and says Moscow intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine. US President Donald Trump returned to power in January 2025 promising to end the war in 24 hours; more than a year of talks has failed.
Ushakov said Russia was "in principle" ready to resume talks with Kyiv and Washington in mid-November, after the US midterm elections. Zelensky said Kyiv backs a meeting as soon as possible. Ushakov said a summit of Putin, Trump and China's Xi Jinping is being prepared in Shenzhen next month.
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The text is factual and well sourced, and it mentions possible talks, but it mostly describes attacks and stalled diplomacy, with little real progress or solution.
The report gives concrete numbers, names and dates, and it stays calm in tone. It also shows the limits of diplomacy: Putin rejects a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky, and more than a year of talks has failed. The only forward-looking element is the vague readiness to resume talks in mid-November and a planned summit, which are announcements rather than results. The score would rise with more on what could make talks succeed, such as concrete proposals, past agreements that worked, or expert analysis of realistic paths to a ceasefire.
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