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Zelenskyy says ballistic missiles hit crowded areas with no military facilities nearby; truce comes amid reports of growing humanitarian crisis. What we know on day 1,707 Russian strikes on Kyiv killed one person and wounded eight , with mayor Vitali Klitschko saying medical facilities and an intensive care unit had been damaged in the late Monday attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a ballistic missile attack had struck the grounds of a university campus in the Ukrainian capital. “The missiles hit very crowded areas, and there is not a single military facility nearby. This was a strike directly on the city, on its infrastructure,” he said on social media. The strikes on Kyiv came hours before a truce in the ravaged Russian-occupied city of Oleshky was due to start , after months of reports that residents faced dire food, water and medicine shortages . The truce, aimed at allowing humanitarian aid into Oleshky, was to begin at 3am local time (0100 GMT). No end date for the truce has been provided. The city in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region has been caught in the crosshairs of fighting between the two sides since 2022, when it was seized by Russian forces. Neither Russia, Ukraine nor the US has said who would monitor the truce, or given details about the humanitarian operation set to accompany it. The Russian defence ministry said on Friday it would halt fire in the “Kherson sector” for the duration of the ceasefire. Ukraine has accused Russia of blocking residents from leaving, a charge Moscow has denied. Before the latest strikes on Kyiv, Zelenskyy highlighted ​Ukraine was still waiting for US defence secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on critical missile supplies . “We have been waiting for nearly a month for Mr Hegseth to sign off on missiles for Patriots and NASAMS. I instructed our team to raise this with the ⁠American side once again,” he said on X. Romania said on Monday that a network “coordinated” from Russia was involved in starting a fire near an arms factory . The fire broke out on 14 September near an arms factory in the central city of Brasov and two Belarusians and a Ukrainian – residents in EU countries – were involved, authorities said. Two of them were “tracked down and remanded in custody in Germany while they were preparing to commit similar offences”, the office for organised crime said. The third is at large in Poland, it added. Russia’s embassy in Bucharest could not immediately be reached for comment but Moscow has repeatedly denied such accusations. The attack in Brasov is the latest in a string of similar incidents in Europe , with Nato and the EU grappling with what they say is a “hybrid” campaign of sabotage and interference by the Kremlin aimed at undercutting Western support for Kyiv. Over the past three weeks, at ​least eight cargo ​ships have been hit off the coast of Nato members Romania and Bulgaria. Some 34 sailors are reported dead or missing. Ukraine’s military has begun using specialised aerial rescue drones to evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield , carrying two stranded troops to safety near the Russian border in the first such operations. The newly developed StarGate drone, a six-rotor aircraft fitted with an enclosed evacuation capsule, was used in two separate missions over the past week, the 475th Separate Assault Regiment, an elite unit, said on Monday. Developed by Ukrainian technology company SkyFall, the drone is intended to reduce rescue times from hours to minutes, reaching hard-to-access combat zones currently served by unmanned ground vehicles. Continue reading...

Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces or enforced neutrality at November meeting, president says. What we know on day 1,706 A trilateral meeting between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow will take place in November aiming to restart stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said . “We are ready to talk. If it’s a territorial issue, it must be addressed at a leadership level. Other issues fall within the remit of the technical groups. All this can therefore be discussed in November,” the Ukrainian president said on Sunday in an interview. Zelenskyy also renewed his push ⁠for a meeting between him and Vladimir Putin, believing that Putin is the only person ​in Russia who can make major decisions to end ​the war. Zelenskyy says that at the trilateral talks, Ukraine will not discuss limits to its armed forces, or enforced postwar neutrality . Kyiv has long sought entry into Nato despite the reticence of some members. Meanwhile, US warnings about imminent ⁠Russian ballistic missile strikes, critical to Ukraine’s air defences, have been fully restored , according to Zelenskyy. He told Ukraine’s ⁠TSN television channel that SpaceX’s ​Starshield satellite internet had been working at speeds of up to 420km/h since early on Saturday, after a meeting with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo. Starshield was throttled earlier in October amid diplomatic pressure on Kyiv from Washington. The US has been trying to pressure Ukraine to suspend strikes on Russian oil refineries , which it says push energy prices higher. However, Zelenskyy has repeatedly said Kyiv will only stop the strikes if Moscow stops hitting Ukraine’s power infrastructure, or if the US allows Ukraine to use of Starshield ‌over Russia to detect launch places of its ballistic missiles, or if it supplies Ukraine with Patriot missiles. Zelenskyy on Sunday said Russia had launched nearly 2,300 drones targeting Ukrainian cities over the past week , renewing his call on western allies to speed up deliveries of interceptors. “This week alone, Russia has launched about 1,600 guided bombs, 48 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, and almost 2,300 strike drones at Ukraine,” he wrote in an online post. Russia’s defence ⁠ministry said on ⁠Sunday ​its drones had struck a ⁠cargo vessel bound for the Black Sea port of ⁠Chornomorsk in an overnight ​attack ‌and another cargo ‌vessel en route to the ‌port of Odesa during the day. The ministry said the vessels were being used to supply the Ukrainian army. Russian ‌forces also hit a logistics centre, a ​distribution centre and a logistics terminal in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight. Reuters could not confirm the reports. A Ukrainian drone attack overnight on the Russian border city ⁠of Belgorod killed ⁠three people ​and injured 13, local authorities said on Sunday , while ⁠a separate drone strike later in the day killed another person. The overnight attack on Belgorod ​damaged 30 apartment buildings, regional governor ⁠Alexander Shuvayev said. The presidential election in Bulgaria on Sunday ended inconclusively, with the next head of state to be picked in a runoff. In a surprisingly strong performance, the candidate of the pro-western reformist opposition, Andrey Gyurov, will face the incumbent leftist president, Iliana Yotova. Iotova opposes military aid to Ukraine and favours dialogue with Russia, while Gyurov has often expressed firm support for Kyiv . The vote was held amid security concerns after a series of drone attacks on ships in the Black Sea . Continue reading...

Ukraine's president says new peace talks could begin in November, but warns that Russia's actions will determine whether they succeed.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine is ready to return to the negotiating table with Russia and the United States in hopes...

Both Putin and Zelenskyy said Thursday they were open for peace negotiations, even as they continued strikes overnight.

Russia launched the strikes on Ukraine less than a day after negotiations to end the war, which also involved the United States, ended in St. Petersburg.

Zelenskyy said: ‘Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian “humanitarians”’ And as we wait for Macron, we have an update for you from Italy on lorry drivers’ protests there. I am keeping an eye on France, where Emmanuel Macron is set to speak shortly after this morning’s emergency security council meeting ahead of more protests expected this weekend. Continue reading...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he's open to freezing the front lines of the Ukraine-Russia war as a real path to end the conflict.

Speaking in Oslo on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said Washington had reaffirmed its commitment to providing Ukraine with security guarantees.