Russia launches scores of drones on Ukraine, four people injured, Kyiv says

Russia launched a barrage of drones in an overnight attack on Ukraine, injuring four people and damaging residential and commercial buildings in Kyiv and other parts of the country, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.

Ukraine’s air defences shot down 56 of 88 Russian drones, its air force said. It added that 24 drones were “lost” as the military used electronic warfare to redirect them.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitchko said that three people were injured in the capital as a result of the drone attacks.

Drone debris also destroyed a private house and damaged several commercial buildings, causing large fires in different parts of Kyiv, city officials said.

One more person was wounded in the city of Kharkiv in the northeast, Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said.

Regional officials also said that residential and commercial buildings were damaged in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, and the military reported damage in the Odesa region in the south.

Read more: Trump envoy’s embrace of Russian demands worries Republicans, U.S. allies

Less than 48 hours after dining with a negotiator sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Washington last week, Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy leading talks with Moscow, sat down with President Donald Trump in the White House and delivered a clear message.

The fastest way to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine, said Witkoff, was to support a strategy that would give Russia ownership of four eastern Ukrainian regions it attempted to annex illegally in 2022, two US officials and five people familiar with the situation told Reuters.

It was a point Witkoff had made previously – and publicly in a podcast interview with conservative media personality Tucker Carlson last month – but one that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected and that some US and European officials have dismissed as a maximalist Russian demand.