Russia launches massive strike on Ukraine day before US-brokered peace talks

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Russia fired around 450 drones and 70 missiles at Ukraine overnight in one of the largest attacks of its ongoing all-out war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday, shortly before the representatives of the two countries were due to attend US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi.

The aerial assault targeted at least five regions and focused on Ukraine’s power grid as part of Moscow’s campaign to deny civilians electricity, heating and running water during the coldest winter in years. At least 10 people were wounded, officials said.

“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorise people is more important to Russia than diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.

He urged Western allies to send more air defence supplies and bring “maximum pressure” on Russia to end its full-scale invasion, now nearing its four-year mark.

The attack hit thermal power plants operated by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, marking the ninth major assault on the firm’s facilities since October.

In Kyiv, strikes damaged and set fire to residential buildings, a kindergarten and a petrol station, wounding five people, the State Emergency Service said.

By early morning, 1,170 apartment buildings in the capital were without heating, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, setting back repair operations that had restored power to all but 80 buildings.

The attack damaged the Hall of Fame at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in World War II, located at the foot of the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna said.

“It is symbolic and cynical at the same time: the aggressor state strikes a place of memory about the fight against aggression in the 20th century, repeating crimes in the 21st,” Berezhna said.

Russia also struck Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region and the southern Odesa region, where injuries were reported.

Officials have described recent talks between the Moscow and Kyiv delegations as constructive, but after a year of efforts, the Trump administration is still searching for a breakthrough on key issues, including Russia’s maximalist demands for control over Ukrainian regions parts of which it currently occupies.

The Abu Dhabi talks are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, yet an agreement appears distant despite Washington’s ongoing push.

Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure throughout the war, attacking substations, transformers, turbines and generators at power plants in an apparent effort to erode civilian morale and pressure Kyiv to negotiate.