At least three people were killed and three others injured in overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine, according to local officials and Ukraine’s air force, in another sign that the war’s frontline violence has continued even as talks over a possible settlement advance.
The attacks came on the same day that Ukraine said negotiations with Russian and U.S. officials would continue in the United Arab Emirates. Al Jazeera reported that Russia fired an Iskander-M ballistic missile and 146 drones, 103 of which were intercepted or neutralised by Ukrainian air defences.
Two of the deaths were reported in the Kyiv region’s Bilohorodska community, where an air attack killed two people. A separate drone strike killed another person in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. In the southern Odesa region, three people were injured when Russian drones hit port infrastructure.
The capital also came under fire. Emergency services said a 17-storey residential building in Kyiv was struck, causing damage to the roof and windows on upper floors. Several other residential buildings in the city remained without power after earlier attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid.
The overnight violence followed a separate drone strike on a commuter train near Kharkiv that killed at least five people and injured others, an attack President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced as terrorism. Those two episodes together highlight the broad range of targets now being hit: trains, homes, ports and power infrastructure.
The timing matters because the same week’s diplomacy has focused on ceasefire prospects and security guarantees. Zelenskyy said the next round of talks was expected on February 1, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov separately described the scheduled discussions in Abu Dhabi as highly complex and involving a very sensitive topic.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow’s overnight strike package was large enough to show sustained pressure, even if most drones were stopped. The damage pattern also fits a familiar Russian tactic in the war: repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure and logistics to strain morale, complicate daily life and impose costs beyond the front line.
At the same time, the broader military picture remains active. Al Jazeera said fighting was continuing along the roughly 1,000-kilometre front in eastern and southern Ukraine. That means the diplomatic process is not unfolding in a pause between battles, but while both sides are still absorbing strikes and launching new ones.
The latest casualties add to an already heavy toll. The report said the attacks have left many Ukrainians without power in freezing conditions, underlining how winter weather makes strikes on energy and transport systems more punishing. For civilians, the result is a war that is still being felt not only in contested ground, but in homes, stations and neighborhoods far from the main battle lines.
