Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv launches ‘massive drone attack’ ahead of peace talks

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 337 Ukrainian drones overnight, with 91 of them over the Moscow region, Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday.

The ministry said in a post on its Telegram channel that 126 drones were destroyed over the Kursk region that borders Ukraine, while the rest of the drones were downed over eight other Russian regions.

Russia’s aviation watchdog said flights were suspended at all four of Moscow’s airports to ensure air safety after alleged drone attacks from Ukraine.

Two other airports, in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, both east of Moscow, were also closed. Vorobyov said that at least seven apartments were damaged and residents forced to evacuate in a multi-storey building in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, about 50km southeast of the Kremlin.

Rail infrastructure at the train station in the Domodedovo district, about 35km south of Moscow, was damaged as result of falling drone debris, RIA news agency reported.

Baza, a news Telegram channel that is close to Russia’s security services, and other Russian news telegram channels posted videos of several residential fires around Moscow that they said were sparked by the attacks.

The strikes came as the United States is pushing for an end to the three-year war that Russia started with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

On Tuesday, US and Ukrainian teams are scheduled to meet for peace talks in Saudi Arabia.

Governors of Ryazan region, just southeast of the Moscow region, and the Belgorod region on border with Ukraine, also said that their regions were under drone attacks. Several settlements in the Belgorod region were left without power, the regional governor said.

A November drone attack on Moscow, the largest in the war at that point, led to the destruction of at least 34 drones. At least one civilian was killed and dozens of homes wrecked around the capital.

Kyiv has often said that its strikes inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued bombing of Ukraine.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the attacks, but thousands of them have died in the conflict so far, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

A total of 69 Ukrainian drones targeting the Russian capital were shot down in a massive attack on Tuesday morning, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

The attack, the biggest targeting Moscow in months, came as a Ukrainian delegation was set to meet with America’s top diplomat in Saudi Arabia about ending the three-year war with Russia.

At least 11 of the drones were shot down in the Ramensky and Domodedovo districts of the Moscow region surrounding the Russian capital, Mr Sobyanin said on the messaging app Telegram.

He didn’t specify where the other drones were shot down, noting only that they were “flying towards Moscow.”

At least one person was killed and three more wounded as a result of the Ukrainian drone attack, alleged the governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov.

The attack damaged seven apartments in a residential building in the Ramensky district, he said.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the roof of a building in Moscow also sustained damage, which he described as “insignificant.”

Footage of the building, published by Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti, showed a charred spot on the facade of a multi-story residential building near the roof, with bits of the building’s lining stripped off.

Flights have been restricted in and out of four Moscow airports, including Domodedovo, Vnukovo and Zhukovsky to the south of the city and Sheremetyevo to the north, according to Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia.

Train traffic through the Domodedovo railway station has also been briefly halted, local officials reported.

There is “no military solution” to the conflict in Ukraine, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said ahead of first official meeting with Ukraine on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia after the disastrous encounter between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump in the White House on 28 February.

Ukraine’s delegation, led by chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, will meet Mr Rubio, and other senior White House officials in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

Ukraine’s position in the talks would be “fully constructive”, said Mr Zelensky.

On his way to Jeddah, Mr Rubio told reporters on the plane: “The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things, to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape or form.

“I think both sides need to come to an understanding that there’s no military solution to this situation.

“The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014.”

Russian air defence units destroyed at least 11 Ukrainian drones flying towards Moscow, the mayor of the Russian capital said, while aviation authorities announced suspending flights at two of the airports serving the city.

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the drones were downed over the Ramenskoye and Domodedovo districts of the Moscow region. Both districts lie about 40km to 50 km south and southeast of the Kremlin.

“According to preliminary information, there is no damage or injuries,” Mr Sobyanin said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Russia’s aviation watchdog said that flights were suspended at the Zhukovo and Domodedovo airports to ensure air safety following the reports of the attacks.

The attacks could not be independently verified. Ukraine has not issued any comments.

Elon Musk has claimed that a cyber attack targeting his social media platform X originated from “IP addresses in the Ukraine area,” as his business empire faces mounting challenges following his entry into the Trump administration.

Speaking to Fox Business on Monday, Mr Musk did not provide evidence for his assertion nor explicitly suggest that state actors were involved.

Earlier in the day, he had posted on X that “either a large, co-ordinated group and/or a country” was responsible for the disruption, which caused widespread outages across the United States and other regions.

Once a key supporter of Ukraine’s war effort through the deployment of Starlink services, Mr Musk has grown increasingly critical of US military aid to Kyiv, referring to the conflict as a “never-ending graft meat grinder”.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz will evaluate Ukraine’s position on potential peace negotiations during their visit to Saudi Arabia, Mr Rubio told reporters aboard his plane before arrival.

Their assessment could influence the US approach to brokering peace if an understanding is reached that aligns with president Donald Trump’s stance.

“What we want to know is, are they interested in entering some sort of peace conversation and general outlines of the kinds of things they could consider, recognising that it has been a costly and bloody war for the Ukrainians. They have suffered greatly and their people have suffered greatly,” Mr Rubio said.

“And it’s hard in the aftermath of something like that to even talk about concessions, but that’s the only way this is going to end and prevent more suffering.”

Mr Rubio emphasised that he would not impose any conditions but was focused on understanding Ukraine’s position in comparison to Russia’s demands.

“I’m not going to set any conditions on what they have to or need to do. I think we want to listen to see how far they’re willing to go and then compare that to what the Russians want and see how far apart we truly are,” he said.

A Ukrainian delegation set to meet with America’s top diplomat in Saudi Arabia about ending the 3-year war with Russia will propose a ceasefire covering the Black Sea and long-range missile strikes, as well as the release of prisoners, two senior Ukrainian officials said on Monday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly about Tuesday’s meeting, also told Associated Press that the Ukrainian delegation is ready during the talks to sign an agreement with the United States on access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals — a deal that US president Donald Trump is keen to secure.

The officials discussed the confidence-building measures, with no further details, ahead of the Ukrainian negotiating team’s meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jeddah.

Kyiv is trying to repair the damage done when Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky’s 28 February visit to Washington descended into an Oval Office argument with Mr Trump and vice president JD Vance.

It’s not just the long-term fate of the war in Ukraine that could be impacted by the upcoming talks in Saudi Arabia.

President Zelensky’s showing could also impact recently paused U.S. aid flows to Ukraine, according to American secretary of state Marco Rubio.

“My hope is we’ll have a really good meeting tomorrow and be in a different place,” he told reporters about the aid as he headed to Jeddah.

Here’s what you need to know about the crucial change in U.S. aid policy looming over the talks.