Zelenskyy Heads to Istanbul for Talks as Russia, Ukraine Trade Deadly Strikes

The overnight exchange of drone salvos killed 10 people across Ukraine and Russia on Saturday, including a family of three in Russian-occupied Luhansk and five civilians at a marketplace in southern Ukraine, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew to Istanbul for the highest-profile diplomatic engagement in months.

Russia launched 286 drones at Ukraine in the overnight barrage, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying it intercepted 260. The deadliest single strike landed in Nikopol, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing three women and two men and wounding 19 others, including a 14-year-old girl, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the regional military administration. The attack damaged market stalls and a nearby shop. In Sumy, near the Russian border, a separate strike wounded 11 people and damaged residential buildings, cars, and utility infrastructure. A drone also struck a three-story office and warehouse building in Kyiv, sparking a first-floor fire with no reported casualties. On the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka road in the partially occupied Donetsk region, a Russian drone hit a civilian car, killing one woman and wounding another, said Serhiy Horbunov, head of the Kostyantynivka City Military Administration. Russia's Defense Ministry claimed its strikes targeted "military-industrial and energy facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces," a formulation Kyiv routinely disputes.

Ukrainian forces struck back across the border. Russia's Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 85 Ukrainian drones over nine Russian regions, annexed Crimea, and the Black Sea. In the Rostov region, one person was killed and four more injured; the strikes set fire to a logistics warehouse and ignited a blaze aboard a foreign-flagged dry-cargo vessel several kilometers offshore, said regional governor Yuri Slyusar. In Russian-occupied Luhansk, the Russian-installed regional head Leonid Pasechnik reported that Ukrainian drones struck railroad infrastructure and private homes, killing a couple and their 8-year-old child. In Tolyatti, in the Samara region, one person was wounded and a residential building sustained roof damage, said governor Vyacheslav Fedorishchev.

Ukraine's Security Service, the SBU, separately announced it used drones to strike a metallurgical plant in Alchevsk, also in occupied Luhansk. The agency said the attack damaged blast furnaces, key production workshops, distillation columns, gas pipelines, and electrical substations at the plant, which supplies Uralvagonzavod, Russia's state manufacturer of tanks and railroad cars. Russian officials offered no immediate comment on the Alchevsk claim.

The strikes unfolded as Zelenskyy arrived at Dolmabahçe Palace on the Bosporus, the same waterfront venue that hosted Ukraine-Russia negotiations in the weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. The Turkish presidency confirmed the visit would address "efforts towards a ceasefire and a lasting solution, particularly within the framework of the Istanbul process." Zelenskyy also met separately with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians. "We are working to strengthen our partnership to ensure the real protection of lives, advance stability, and guarantee security in Europe and the Middle East," Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram after arriving. "Joint efforts always yield the best results."

Saturday's meeting followed a Friday phone call between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the two leaders discussed an immediate ceasefire and what the Kremlin described as "the importance of coordinated measures" to ensure Black Sea security. Russia has maintained it seeks a permanent settlement rather than a brief pause in fighting and has claimed it received no formally articulated proposals from Kyiv. Zelenskyy had pushed for a ceasefire specifically covering energy infrastructure, a proposal Moscow continued to ignore as Russian strikes on Ukrainian substations and transformers persisted through the night.