Russia pounds Ukraine's capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, hours after agreeing to peace talks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks on Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones overnight into Thursday killed one person and wounded 22, Ukrainian authorities said. The strikes in Kyiv came hours after the Kremlin agreed to restart U.S.-brokered talks aimed at ending the war. The attack damaged homes, transportation infrastructure and other civilian sites in several districts of the city, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.

In the Dniprovskyi district, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, one person was killed and six were wounded, including a child, as fires broke out. On Wednesday, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed “in principle” to resume three-way negotiations involving Russia, the United States and Ukraine after Nov. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy backed the push for new talks, but was cautious.

“We’ll see what happens this time,” he said shortly before missile alerts sounded over Kyiv. ___ Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine Source Petersburg.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy backed the push for new talks, but was cautious.“We’ll see what happens this time,” he said shortly before missile alerts sounded over Kyiv.___Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Russia and Ukraine traded attacks overnight, with seven killed on the Ukrainian side, authorities said on Thursday, shortly after US President Donald Trump’s envoy held talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg. Trump sought to strike an optimistic tone after US envoy Steve Witkoff’s meeting with Putin on Wednesday, saying negotiators were “maybe now the closest we’ve been” to ending the war. The Kremlin indicated it was “in principle” open to the resumption of trilateral talks involving the two sides and the United States.

But attacks did not let up in the wake of the visit. Moscow’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two people had been wounded in huge barrages of 630 drones fired towards the region, 163 of which were approaching the Russian capital. The governor of nearby Tula region said Russian air defences had destroyed 70 drones.

Another man was wounded in the Lipetsk region, its governor said. In Ukraine, the attacks killed one man in Sumy and a woman in Kharkiv, both in the northeast, as well as three people in southeastern Zaporizhzhia and two in the eastern region of Donetsk, authorities said. Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media strikes had wounded 15 people in the Ukrainian capital.