Ukraine

The Ukraine war, explained: Russia's war against Ukraine began in February 2014 with the covert seizure of Crimea and a proxy war in the Donbas that killed more than 14,000 people, then became Europe's largest war since 1945 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022. The drive on Kyiv failed, Ukraine's 2022 counteroffensives retook Kharkiv region and Kherson, and the war has since hardened into attrition on the ground and a missile-and-drone campaign against Ukraine's energy grid — with combined military casualties estimated above two million and no settlement in place as trilateral talks approach in November 2026.

The Komyshuvakha death toll has risen to 53, the acting governor of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region said on Friday, as search and rescue work at the bombed aid distribution point entered its fifth day under the constant threat of repeat Russian strikes — up from 42 confirmed dead on Thursday.

The Komyshuvakha death toll has reached 42, Ukrainian police said on Thursday, with up to 33 people still buried under the rubble of Monday's bombing of an aid distribution point in the Zaporizhzhia region — and bodycam footage from a police officer who was killed, verified by Reuters, has recorded the moments before a second strike destroyed the shelter where residents were hiding.

Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin's special envoy, will attend a White House event hosted by First Lady Melania Trump on Thursday and meet US administration officials — the first in-person contact between Russian and US officials since midterm elections in which Democrats secured control of both the Senate and the House, five days before trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi.

The death toll from Monday's Russian bombing of a school used as a humanitarian aid centre in the village of Komyshuvakha has risen to at least 31, officials said on Tuesday, with nearly 50 people still missing under the rubble. The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine condemned the strikes, which he said killed at least 29 civilians and, in follow-up strikes, two rescuers and four police staff. CNN reported a higher confirmed toll of 33. All figures are Ukrainian officials' figures carried by independent outlets; they have not been independently verified, and no Russian statement on the Komyshuvakha strikes appeared in the reporting opened on Tuesday.

Russia's massive overnight strike on Ukraine's power grid inflicted severe damage on energy facilities in 10 regions, Ukraine's Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said on Tuesday, leaving more than 180,000 customers in the Zhytomyr region without power, heavily damaging a DTEK facility in Odesa region, and injuring at least 73 people in Kharkiv, according to updated figures from regional authorities reported by the Kyiv Post.

The United States will bring together delegations from Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11 to discuss ending Moscow's war against Ukraine, post-war security agreements and de-escalation, US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Monday. It would be the first US-mediated trilateral round since February, before the United States and Israel launched their war against Iran. Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to the new round after meeting Witkoff in St Petersburg two weeks ago, a senior US official told Reuters, while cautioning that Ukraine and Russia remain far apart on the terms of any peace deal.

At least 26 people were killed on Monday when Russian aerial bombs hit a school in the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region while it was being used to distribute humanitarian aid, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, with a repeat strike hitting the shelter where people had gathered. The toll rose through the day from an initial 18, and Ukraine's emergencies service said its confirmed count of 24 included two rescuers and four police officers. All figures come from Ukrainian officials; the Russian military has not publicly commented, and the toll and the attribution have not been independently verified.

Ukraine's General Staff said on Monday that Russian forces used last week's six-day Oleshky ceasefire — the longest local pause since 2022, which evacuated nearly 800 people — to rotate units, fortify positions and bring in ammunition, a claim the Kremlin answered by assuming Ukraine had regrouped too, as Russian forces shelled 16 settlements across Kherson region in the 24 hours to 0400 GMT on Monday.

Ukraine's public air raid alert app was hacked on Sunday night and briefly sent false nuclear, chemical and street-fighting warnings, the Air Force said — and hours later Russia's emergencies ministry said its own mobile app had been hit by a massive cyberattack that spread false information. Neither side's attribution is independently confirmed, and Reuters reported it was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were linked.

Ukraine power outages left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity on Sunday after Russia hit power infrastructure in four regions overnight, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said — while in Russia, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod region said a massive drone attack caused significant damage to an industrial facility in the Kstovo district, amid reports the target was a refinery thought to be one of Russia's largest.

Ukraine struck Rosneft's Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery in Russia's Samara region early on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported, ending a two-week pause in refinery attacks that had held under heavy pressure from the Trump administration. Fires broke out at the plant, which makes jet fuel for Russia's air force; the region's governor confirmed a major drone attack on the region but did not name the refinery, and the extent of the damage is not yet known.

Officials from both warring sides said humanitarian aid was entering the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine on Friday, and residents who wish to leave were offered buses to Ukraine or to Russia — the culmination of a US-brokered local ceasefire that has held for more than three days. Ukraine's prime minister retracted an early figure of 527 evacuees, saying the number planning to leave was still being determined as the rescue operation continued.

The localised ceasefire that began around Russian-occupied Oleshky on Tuesday has been expanded across the whole Kherson region and was holding with no breaches reported, officials on both sides said — US first lady Melania Trump announced the expansion 'beyond Oleshky, within the Kherson Region' for the humanitarian convoys, Ukraine's ombudsman's office confirmed it was in effect throughout the region, and Russia's human rights commissioner said no violations had been recorded on either side. The truce is due to run until 22:59 Kyiv time on Sunday, November 1, with mine-clearing under way, aid deliveries expected Thursday and evacuations planned for Friday.

New Russian strikes early on Tuesday, October 27, 2026 hit Kyiv's Southern Bridge and the subway infrastructure carried on it, forcing a suspension of traffic across one of the capital's main Dnipro crossings, city officials said, Reuters reported. The second wave of the barrage lifted the toll in Kyiv since Monday evening to at least one person killed and 15 injured, including students at a university dormitory. The strikes began minutes after a localised ceasefire took effect around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, hundreds of kilometres to the south.

Ukraine has been waiting for almost a month for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign off on critical Patriot and NASAMS missile supplies, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday, October 26, 2026, as Russia stepped up attacks on energy and civilian infrastructure ahead of winter, Reuters reported. The missiles are bought by NATO allies under the PURL programme; Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged last week that a batch of interceptors may not have been delivered, but said the delay was not for political reasons.

The Patriot air defence system, explained: a mobile Raytheon-built shield whose radar tracks up to 100 targets beyond 150 km, whose PAC-3 interceptors destroy ballistic missiles by colliding with them at $4 million to $5 million per shot, and whose global stocks have been depleted by simultaneous wars in Ukraine and the Middle East — about 65 percent of US interceptors were expended between February and July, CSIS estimates cited by Reuters say, leaving fewer than 850 on hand.

Russia and Ukraine began a localised ceasefire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky at 01:00 GMT on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, both sides confirmed — Russia's defence ministry said it stopped shelling towards Kherson from 4 a.m. Moscow time, and Ukraine's negotiating-team head Dmytro Lubinets confirmed Ukraine was honouring its commitments. The pause opens the humanitarian operation for a front-line town suffering acute shortages of food and medicine, even as a Russian missile attack on Kyiv late on Monday killed at least one person and injured 10, including students at a dormitory, Reuters reported, citing Ukrainian officials.

Russian authorities committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through continuous attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure carried out as a state policy to deprive civilians of essential services, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said in a report submitted to the UN General Assembly on Monday, October 26, 2026. The commission, which based its findings on 255 people who endured the winter of 2025-2026 across nine Ukrainian regions, also found compelling evidence that Russian authorities trafficked men from 29 countries, through deception and coercion, into the Russian armed forces.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview aired on Sunday that Ukraine would halt its strikes on Russian oil refineries if Moscow stopped hitting Ukrainian power infrastructure — or, alternatively, if the United States allowed Starshield to be used over Russia to detect missile launch sites or supplied Patriot missiles — after Washington pressed Kyiv to suspend the refinery campaign over high energy prices, Reuters reported on Monday, October 26, 2026. Overnight, Russian strikes injured six people in Zaporizhzhia and the Chernihiv region, Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian forces have liberated Perebudova, Komar and Fedorivka in the Oleksandrivka direction and forced Russia to redeploy elite naval infantry and tank elements meant for other offensives, the Institute for the Study of War assessed on October 25, 2026, citing Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets. The same assessment found Ukraine's interception rate against Russian jet-powered drones slipped only from 77 percent to about 74 percent during the mid-October Starshield restrictions — and that holding it will depend on cheap interceptor drones like the roughly $7,000 F-Jet 80, against air-to-air missiles costing an estimated $1 million each.

An overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian city of Belgorod killed two people and injured 13, and another person was killed near Shebekino, Reuters reported on Sunday, citing local authorities — a toll of three killed and 14 injured across the Belgorod region. Governor Alexander Shuvayev said the attack damaged 30 blocks of flats, 35 cars, four houses, three administrative buildings, eight commercial premises and three social facilities. Italy's ANSA news agency, reporting earlier on Sunday, had put the Belgorod death toll at one. The attack followed a Russian drone strike on a residential building in Ukraine's Synelnykove district on Saturday that killed three civilians, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX had throttled the Starlink satellite service in Ukraine, saying Ukraine's military had violated the civilian service's terms by using it for offensive drone strikes — an admission, reported by the Associated Press, that came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Starlink and Starshield speeds had been restored. A Ukrainian presidential adviser disputed the accusation, and Kyiv said it had received no communication from SpaceX about any alleged violation.

Ukraine's defence ministry said on Saturday its monitoring systems were recording Starlink and Starshield connections stable at speeds exceeding 400 km/h, and President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the services had resumed at pre-restriction speeds — reversing Friday's position, when Ukrainian officials said the 160 km/h caps disrupting drone operations were still in place despite President Trump's assurance.

Long before this month's throttling of Ukraine's military satellite access, the Biden and Trump administrations repeatedly asked SpaceX to turn Starlink on or off in different countries — to cut off Houthi and Hezbollah terminals, to open service inside Iran, and to expand it for Ukraine's military — six former senior US officials told Reuters. Ukrainian officials said on Friday the speed caps disrupting drones above 160 km/h were still in place, despite President Trump's assurance that access had been restored.

Russia and Ukraine confirmed on Friday that a localized ceasefire in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, brokered through US first lady Melania Trump, will take effect at 01:00 GMT on October 27 — two days earlier than the White House first announced — to allow aid deliveries, demining and a civilian evacuation. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said trilateral technical talks will follow in the first half of November.

A massive Russian attack on a DTEK thermal power station on Thursday caused serious damage and forced the plant to stop generating electricity, Ukraine's largest private energy company said on Friday — the latest blow in an energy campaign that since mid-August has struck thermal, combined heat-and-power and hydroelectric plants, and in October spread to previously untargeted western regions. No staff were injured, DTEK said, and it is not disclosing the plant's location. The UN says September's civilian casualties were 85 percent higher than a year earlier, and its migration agency warns millions face the hardest winter since the full-scale invasion began.

Russian ballistic missiles and drones struck Kyiv overnight into Thursday, killing one person and wounding 22, Ukrainian authorities said, in a third wave of strikes on the capital since Wednesday evening — while Moscow's mayor said 630 Ukrainian drones targeted the Moscow region overnight, most of them downed. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used 21 ballistic missiles and attacked 12 regions; AFP reported seven people killed in four regions outside the capital. The counts published by the wires and by the president had not been reconciled.

Russian forces attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles on Wednesday evening, injuring six people and damaging homes, a petrol station and transport equipment in districts east of the Dnipro River, Ukrainian officials said — and missiles struck the capital again in the early hours of Thursday, a Reuters witness reported. The two waves came hours after Russia said it was willing in principle to resume trilateral peace talks with Ukraine and the United States, and as Ukraine's air force warned of more ballistic missiles heading for the capital.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Ukraine supports a US proposal for three-way talks with Russia and the United States at the level of negotiators, to be held as soon as possible and preferably no later than early November. Speaking to journalists as he returned to Kyiv from Norway, Zelenskiy said Kyiv had received feedback that Russia supports a trilateral meeting of the negotiating teams — matching the Kremlin's statement earlier on Wednesday that President Putin is willing in principle to resume the talks next month. Zelenskiy said Ukraine supports any proposals for a ceasefire, including an energy ceasefire and humanitarian initiatives.

President Vladimir Putin told US special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday that Moscow is willing in principle to resume talks next month with Ukraine and the United States on ending the war, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said — a format that has not met since February. Ushakov said the talks should focus on building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends. In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the same day that he supports a ceasefire and trilateral talks, and that a freeze of the fighting along the current front line is the minimum Ukraine needs from Russia.

Russia has expanded its strikes on Ukraine's energy sector from the east and centre to power plants and transmission systems in previously untargeted western regions, causing waves of blackouts, Ukrainian energy officials said on Tuesday. Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said facilities were struck in the western Zhytomyr, Lviv, Rivne, Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi regions as well as in central Kirovohrad and southern Odesa, where an overnight attack on three DTEK facilities left 32,700 families without electricity. The widening campaign continued overnight into Wednesday, when drones killed two people near Kharkiv and a strike hit a high-rise apartment building in Kyiv.

President Vladimir Putin hosted US special envoy Steve Witkoff at the Constantine Palace in St Petersburg on Wednesday for their ninth in-person meeting on ending the war in Ukraine, and opened the talks by announcing the release of Stephen Hubbard, the 74-year-old retired American teacher held in Russia since 2022. Witkoff said there was a basis for a ceasefire and that he hoped Putin would consider resuming three-way talks between Russia, the United States and Ukraine. No agreement was announced.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Oslo on Tuesday that Kyiv is once again receiving early warnings of Russian ballistic missile attacks, after a week in which he said Ukraine got no warning of strikes on the capital. He credited talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and meetings with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Rubio, speaking in India, said US policy had never changed and denied any deliberate decision to withhold support. Russian attacks on Tuesday killed at least nine people across Ukraine and cut power in 12 regions, officials said.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy flew to Oslo on Tuesday to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff, trying to repair ties with Washington that have deteriorated sharply over two weeks as President Donald Trump has courted Moscow. Trump said on Monday that Russia has been 'fine' on Ukraine and that Kyiv should find 'somebody else to negotiate', while Zelenskiy says US decisions slowing support are 'hard to explain between friends'.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is waiving many of the sanctions, restrictions and duties due to take effect under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, the law he signed last month, certifying to Congress that the waiver is in the national interests of the United States. The law would have imposed tariffs of up to 100% on goods from the five largest importers of Russian crude oil and gas. The move drew bipartisan criticism in Washington and praise from the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, and it came a week after a Russian diesel deal that Ukraine's president said left him feeling betrayed.

Russia launched 332 drones at Ukraine overnight into Saturday, of which Ukraine's Air Force said 289 were shot down, while ballistic missiles struck 22 locations and energy attacks cut power in Vinnytsia. Russia's defence ministry said the barrage hit Ukraine's largest steelworks at Kryvyi Rih, a Zhytomyr power substation, a Zaporizhzhia steel plant and a Black Sea cargo vessel — claims Reuters said it could not independently confirm. Regional authorities put the past day's toll at seven people killed and around 90 injured.

Russia's government is discussing the problems facing Yandex after Ukrainian strikes took three of its data centres out of action in less than a week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. Yandex has said its Vladimir data centre shut down completely on Sunday, following earlier strikes in the Kaluga region and at Sasovo, where two of the supercomputers used to develop its AI model are housed.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday that contacts about the Russia-Ukraine energy ceasefire announced by President Donald Trump on Sunday are continuing, but offered no details, no scope and no confirmation that Moscow has agreed to anything. Ukraine says Russia has already violated the announcement, the EU has imposed new sanctions, and Russia's Defence Ministry says its overnight strikes hit no Ukrainian energy targets.

Ukraine's military said on Friday that it hit three facilities involved in missile production across Russia overnight, including a factory in the Tver region that makes missile components and a centre in the Nizhny Novgorod region for disassembling intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russian regional governors confirmed drone attacks at both sites, with one serviceman reported killed.

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet Ukrainian representatives in Miami on Friday to try to produce a unified proposal for ending the war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the conflict a 'dangerous stalemate' — an assessment the Kremlin said it agreed with — as both sides escalate strikes on each other's economies.

At least 33 people were killed and 18 wounded in a Russian bomb strike on a Kramatorsk street where two city buses were operating on October 8, 2026 — the deadliest single strike in Ukraine this year, according to AFP and CNN, far above the toll reported in the morning's first accounts.

A Russian bomb attack on a street in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 12 people and wounded 14 on Thursday, October 8, 2026, Ukrainian authorities said, hitting two city buses and a bus stop.

Ukraine is navigating its biggest budget crisis since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022: the war costs about $190 million a day, tax revenue is falling, Russian strikes have shut steel plants and cut grain exports by more than a third, and Kyiv needs $56 billion to plug this year's funding gap.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on October 4 that the United States is pressing for technical-level trilateral talks with Russia by the end of October, with Kyiv ready to take part in the UAE or another US-proposed venue. The push coincides with India's expanded mediation effort, focused on Black Sea shipping, grain and energy.

Russia carried out massive air strikes on industrial and port infrastructure in Ukraine's Odesa region early Monday, October 5, with Kyiv reporting one person killed and six injured in a separate strike on Kharkiv. Moscow says it hit ports, fuel depots and cargo vessels it claims serve military purposes; neither side's claims have been independently verified.

Kyiv says it intercepted a Russian operational plan for a winter campaign of up to 1,000 strikes on Ukraine's energy system, including the switchyards linking its three operating nuclear plants to the grid. The New York Times obtained a copy; neither it nor The Times has independently authenticated the document.

Russia launched nearly 190 drones and ballistic missiles at Ukraine on the night of September 29–30, targeting Kyiv's energy infrastructure in what ISW assesses is the opening of a winter-long campaign to degrade Ukraine's energy security and force capitulation.

Russia launched a large combined ballistic-missile and drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region overnight, killing at least three people including a child, damaging energy infrastructure, and sending a drone into Moldovan airspace — Reuters and EA WorldView reported.

Kyiv's public disclosure of a quiet handover of two North Korean prisoners of war has sparked a rare diplomatic clash with Seoul — which demanded an explanation and apology, while Ukraine says no secrecy deal ever existed.

Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev met US officials in Washington on Monday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and possible postwar US–Russia energy initiatives, a US official said Tuesday — the latest step in a fast-moving diplomatic sequence that includes a proposed energy-infrastructure ceasefire.

Russian glide bombs struck a school and homes in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, killing two people and injuring six — including three children — after teachers evacuated about 100 people into a shelter, Reuters reported.

The Ukraine frontline is 'static' after months of near-zero advances, ISW assesses — but Moscow is betting on a massive winter strike campaign to force Kyiv's surrender before spring 2027. Here is where the war stands.

Drones now cause most casualties in Ukraine, and a 'kill zone' up to 10 kilometers deep has made moving on the battlefield nearly suicidal. How cheap FPV drones rewrote the grammar of war.

Russia struck the head office of Ukraine's largest mobile provider Kyivstar and a Vodafone data centre on Sunday — the latest and most symbolically significant escalation of its week-long bombardment of Ukrainian communications infrastructure.

Russian strikes hit the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile provider, on September 27 — part of a week-long campaign against data centres — while Ukraine struck refineries deep inside Russia.