Russia has pounded Ukraine with ballistic missiles while Ukraine sent hundreds of drones towards Moscow on Friday despite the latest United States push to end the conflict.
Ukraine said Russia fired at least 21 ballistic missiles in three waves. Three of them carried cluster munitions — "bomblets" that disperse over a wide area and are banned by many countries because of the danger to civilians. Russia's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Russia said Ukraine launched 630 drones towards Moscow during the night.
"Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian 'humanitarians' since yesterday evening," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on X. "They used 21 missiles. Unfortunately, numerous sites across the city have been hit and damaged."
He said two people were killed and 34 injured, including five children, in attacks on a dozen Ukrainian regions.
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Regional officials said a Russian strike on a market in Lozova, near the northeastern city of Kharkiv, killed two people and injured 36. One person was killed in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
Russia said it carried out a "massive strike" overnight on port infrastructure in Ukraine's Odesa region, as well as on vessels used by the Ukrainian military.
In Russia, two people were wounded near Moscow by drones launched overnight towards the capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said . Most of the drones were downed at long range, he added.
In the Russian border region of Belgorod, one man was killed and another wounded by Ukrainian drones, local officials said.
The two sides also held an exchange of war dead, with Moscow handing over 252 bodies and Ukraine handing over 25, according to the Belta state news agency in neighbouring Belarus. Such exchanges have accompanied moves towards talks in the past.
On Thursday, Russia said it was ready to resume US-mediated talks with Ukraine next month, after Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted US envoy Steve Witkoff for talks in St Petersburg.
Zelenskyy said he hoped negotiations, which would be the first since February, would take place early in November.
Witkoff spoke of "some degree of momentum" after meeting Zelenskyy and European and NATO officials in Oslo earlier in the week, but Russia expressed doubts.
"The Americans sensed some new nuances (in Oslo) and told us about this. But these nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us," Russian aide Yuri Ushakov said on Friday.
A senior Russian official, briefed on the results of the Putin-Witkoff talks, said they were relatively short and not substantive. Witkoff had brought a set of proposals drafted in Oslo and handed them to Putin for review, the person said.
Another source close to Russia said the US proposals included a scenario where Ukraine would cede all of its Donbas region to Russia in return for receiving a guarantee of its future security from NATO.
Russia has said it launched the war — the deadliest in Europe since World War Two — in part to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Moscow has repeatedly said it would not end fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, limits the size of its forces and is permanently barred from forming alliances.
Ukraine, which says the invasion was an unprovoked war of conquest, has long dismissed Russia's conditions as a demand for capitulation that would leave it defenceless against future Russian attacks.
