Ukraine resumes massive drone strikes after negotiations between US and Putin

The Ukrainian army resumed massive attacks against Russian territory this Sunday after US emissaries held negotiations in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin the day before.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, anti-aircraft defenses shot down 258 enemy drones overnight, five times more than the previous day. Up to 14 Russian regions, the annexed Crimean peninsula and the Black and Azov seas were attacked.

In addition, according to the Telegram channel Astra, unmanned devices caused a fire at a refinery of the oil company Rosneft, the largest in the country, in the Ryazan region, which is less than 200 kilometers from Moscow. The governor, Pável Málkov, confirmed the fire in one of the companies in the region, without specifying.

This refinery is considered one of the largest in Russia with a processing capacity of almost 17 million tons per year. It produces gasoline, liquefied gas and kerosene for airplanes, among other things.

Meanwhile, three people have died in the last 24 hours in the border region of Belgorod, the most affected by the war, in more than one hundred attacks with howitzers and drones by the Ukrainian army, according to authorities.

In turn, seven trains with passengers had to be stopped after fragments from a drone hit the locomotive of a train in the southern region of Rostov, as confirmed by Governor Yuri Sliusar. As a result of the attacks, four people were injured, two of them minors.

Russia and Ukraine agreed on Saturday to cease attacks on their respective capitals for 72 hours, coinciding with the presence of White House mediators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who must hold consultations today, Sunday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

According to the Kremlin, the meeting held on Saturday with Putin was “timely” and Moscow maintains its commitment to the US to jointly seek a negotiated solution to the current conflict.

Furthermore, he confirmed, as US President Donald Trump had anticipated, that the emissaries presented a proposal to advance the peaceful settlement, although neither party ever revealed what those ideas were.

Of course, Putin assured his interlocutors that the Russian army will achieve "the objectives set" within the framework of its military campaign and reminded them of the "genuine successes" of his troops on the front.

Independent experts consider that Russia has managed to accelerate its offensive in Donbas in recent weeks, but they rule out that it can take over all that territory before the arrival of the harsh winter.