Photo: ArmyInform / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets overnight in one of its biggest aerial attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion nearly five years ago, as American-led efforts to negotiate an end to the war entered a delicate new phase.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences shot down 1,198 Ukrainian long-range drones between late Thursday and early Friday. But strikes that got through in three Russian regions killed seven people, including a 12-year-old, and wounded 17 others, local officials said.
Volgograd Refinery Set Ablaze
Ukraine's General Staff said its drones struck an oil refinery in the Russian city of Volgograd, starting a fire. The Lukoil refinery is one of Russia's largest, with a capacity of about 110 million barrels a year, according to Ukraine's military.
Ukraine has repeatedly targeted Russian refineries in recent months, and Kyiv claimed last month that its campaign had neutralised more than half of Russia's refining capacity. The scale of the overnight barrage underlined Kyiv's ability to strike deep inside Russian territory even as its troops remain under heavy pressure along the roughly 1,200-kilometre front line.
Russia Hits Back as Power Fails Across Ukraine
Russia launched 117 drones against Ukraine overnight, killing at least two people, including a 17-year-old, Ukrainian authorities said. A single Russian attack on Friday in the southern Zaporizhzhia region hit two five-storey apartment blocks and wounded 30 people, including six children, officials said.
Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure caused widespread power outages across about half of the country's regions on Friday, First Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said. Moscow has battered Ukraine's power grid each winter of the war, hoping to weaken public morale as temperatures fall.
Peace Talks Widen as Europe Joins the Table
The strikes came as US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Dublin after two days of talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week. More talks are planned, the envoys said, as negotiators seek a breakthrough in the peace efforts.
A team of diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the European Union will be sent to the talks, European Council President Antonio Costa said after a meeting in Dublin. Kushner said Russia had agreed to include Europe in the upcoming talks, after Moscow had long insisted that European governments should be excluded because they supported Ukraine.
Europe's presence at the table will allow negotiators "to address the broader postwar European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia," Kushner said on X.
European leaders remain wary of Moscow's intentions. "Russia wants to talk about questions of European security architecture. We don't need to talk about that. There is one," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, referring to NATO. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned that Europe must insist on a ceasefire before taking the negotiations further, saying that discussing Russia's security demands first would mean walking "into the traps that Russia is setting us."
The Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment on Thursday that Moscow is aiming "to dismantle NATO and the post-Cold War European security architecture."
Zelenskyy Renews Complaint Over Starlink Limits
Zelenskyy also repeated his complaints about drone speed limits on Starshield, the military-grade version of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet system that Ukraine needs for its defence. The speed restrictions are limiting Ukrainian drones to 161 kilometres per hour on the entire front line and in Russian-occupied territory, he said, making it impossible for Kyiv to deploy its interceptors effectively against Moscow's fast-moving jet-powered drones.
"We still have no clear explanations," Zelenskyy said of the unannounced restrictions, after first raising the issue on Thursday. Ukrainian officials are asking the US State Department, the Pentagon and SpaceX to clarify and resolve the situation. Last month, similar SpaceX limits on Ukrainian drone speeds severely disrupted operations, alarming officials in Kyiv who fear a drop in US support. SpaceX chief Elon Musk acknowledged in October that his company had throttled the Starlink internet service in Ukraine for about a week, saying the system could not be used for offensive strikes against Russia.
Meanwhile, 105 members of the US House of Representatives have demanded that the Trump administration and SpaceX immediately restore Ukraine's full access to the satellite system.
Sources: Associated Press; The Manila Times.