Russia launches heavy strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv amid ongoing peace talks

Russia launched a massive wave of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine’s two largest cities early Saturday as trilateral peace talks involving U.S., Ukrainian, and Russian negotiators entered their second day in the United Arab Emirates.

Officials in Kyiv said at least one person was killed and 15 others were injured in the capital. In Kharkiv, at least 14 people were wounded after drones targeted a dormitory, a hospital, and a maternity ward.

The assault crippled energy infrastructure, causing widespread outages of electricity and heat. Preliminary estimates show at least 1.2 million people lost power nationwide, including 800,000 in Kyiv alone.

The Ukrainian air force reported that Russia deployed a total of 396 drones and missiles during the offensive.

Despite the strikes, diplomats continued their meetings in Abu Dhabi. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the discussions as "constructive."

Zelenskyy also called for the "full implementation" of air defense agreements recently reached with U.S. President Donald Trump in Davos.

Both sides reported that control over the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine remains a primary obstacle to a peace agreement.

Russia’s intensified strikes on Kyiv and Kharkiv, launched in the midst of U.S.-led diplomatic overtures, are a calculated escalation rather than a tactical anomaly. Moscow is employing a classic strategy of coercive diplomacy, applying maximum military pressure to manufacture leverage at the negotiating table. By targeting major urban centers, the Kremlin is signaling its readiness to widen the conflict, effectively forcing Washington and Kyiv to weigh Russian demands against the cost of continued civilian attrition.

The barrage serves as an immediate litmus test for the Trump administration and its nascent peace process. Moscow is gauging the new administration’s threshold for escalation: whether Washington will accelerate military assistance to bolster Ukraine’s defensive posture, or lean on Kyiv to make concessions to keep the talks viable. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already moved to frame the attacks as a catalyst for action, citing the strikes to urge the Trump transition team to expedite air defense commitments—shifting the focus from abstract diplomacy to concrete security guarantees.

However, the underlying geopolitical calculus remains unchanged. Russia’s continued insistence on sovereign control over the Donbas remains the primary obstacle to any breakthrough. The recent strikes underscore that Moscow has no intention of retreating from its territorial objectives. While the UAE-hosted talks have been characterized as "constructive," they currently function as a venue for probing red lines rather than resolving the core conflict. For now, the diplomatic track remains secondary to the kinetic reality on the battlefield, which continues to be the ultimate arbiter of the war’s outcome.