World News
Russia strikes Kyiv with ballistic missiles hours after agreeing to resume three-way peace talks
By Staff Writer | 23 October 2026
Ukraine said at least 21 ballistic missiles were fired at the capital in three waves overnight into Thursday. A day earlier the Kremlin had said it was ready in principle to return to talks with the United States and Ukraine.
Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles overnight into Thursday, hours after the Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin had agreed in principle to resume three-way negotiations with the United States and Ukraine.
Ukraine said at least 21 ballistic missiles were launched at the capital in three waves. In Kyiv at least two people were killed and 22 wounded, four of them children. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that across attacks on about a dozen regions two people had been killed and 34 injured, including five children.
The sites hit in the capital included the southern bridge over the Dnipro, houses, energy infrastructure, an ambulance station, office buildings and a clinic. Zelensky said three of the missiles carried cluster warheads. One struck the Pecherskyi district, damaging several historic buildings, among them a monastery.
The strikes came the morning after Putin received the US envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg, a meeting that saw the release of the jailed American Stephen Hubbard.
Talks after 10 November
The Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Wednesday that Putin had agreed in principle to resume talks involving Russia, the United States and Ukraine after 10 November, a week after the US midterm elections. He was cool about what the American side had reported back from its meeting earlier in the week in Oslo, where Witkoff saw Zelensky together with European and NATO officials.
The Americans sensed some new nuances and told us about this. But these nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us.
Yuri Ushakov, Kremlin foreign policy aide
At the St Petersburg meeting Witkoff described Putin as a humanitarian. Downing Street said it did not recognise that description. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said appeasement and flattery would not stop Russian aggression, and Zelensky said the overnight strikes showed that Moscow was not serious about peace. He called for stronger air defences, more Patriot interceptors and further sanctions.
Drones over Moscow
Russia said Ukraine had launched 630 drones towards Moscow during the night. The city's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said two people were wounded near the capital and that most of the drones were brought down at long range. In the Belgorod border region one man was killed and another wounded by Ukrainian drones, local officials said. Russia said it had carried out a large strike on port infrastructure in the Odesa region and on vessels used by the Ukrainian military.
The two sides also exchanged the bodies of soldiers killed in the war, with Russia handing over 252 and Ukraine 25, according to Belarusian state media. Such exchanges have accompanied moves towards talks in the past.
Kyiv has said that from 4 October Washington stopped passing on early warning data about Russian missile launches. Zelensky said this week that those warnings had resumed.
Three short meetings in Istanbul last year and three rounds of US-mediated talks at the start of this year produced no breakthrough. Russia has said it will not end the fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land and accepts limits on its armed forces.