Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Russia pummelled Kyiv with drones and missiles early on Tuesday, resuming its air attacks after a brief halt for the visit of US peace negotiators, and killing five people, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
The overnight attack caused fires in several districts across the Ukrainian capital, damaging at least 14 high-rise buildings, a dorm, a school, a clinic, warehouses and other sites, officials said.
Smoke rises in the city during a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 8th September, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters/Gleb Garanich
“Kyiv was exploding and burning,” Katarina Mathernova, the EU ambassador to Ukraine, said in a social media post.
Explosions reverberated across the city as Russia kept menacing it with jet-powered drones into Tuesday afternoon.
Two people were killed in a strike on a warehouse, bringing the total death toll in the city to five, Klitschko said. Close to 30 people have been injured, authorities said.
In a separate strike, a Russian drone partially destroyed a Ukrainian TV channel building in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff left Kyiv on Sunday following talks with Zelenskiy, as the Trump administration renewed its push to end Russia’s four-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.
They arrived following talks in Moscow, after which the Kremlin said it did not rule out the resumption of three-way negotiations also including the United States.
TRUMP TOLD PUTIN HE WANTS SWIFT END TO UKRAINE WAR AND US-RUSSIA TIES RESTORED, KREMLIN SAYS
Donald Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Tuesday that he wanted a swift end to the war in Ukraine, which would allow US-Russia ties to be fully restored, the Kremlin said, adding that Putin had supported the US President’s view.
The call, which the Kremlin said lasted an hour, followed a weekend visit to Moscow and Kyiv by US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are trying to revive stalled talks designed to find a way to end the fighting.
Their weekend diplomacy did not appear to result in any immediate public breakthrough although they did raise the possibility that three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States could be resumed. The Kremlin, which has said it does not rule that out, made no mention of the possibility in its readout of the Putin-Trump call.
Instead, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that the two leaders had rated the US envoys’ weekend diplomacy “with a plus sign” and that Putin had told Trump what he believed the United States could do to help end the conflict and given him an assessment of what the situation on the battlefield was.
Trump, Ushakov said, had made it clear he wanted the war quickly finished.
“Donald Trump clearly emphasised the desirability of bringing the conflict to an end as soon as possible, which would immediately open up prospects – impressive and far-reaching ones at that – for the full restoration of relations between the US and Russia,” said Ushakov.
“In his view, this would have a particular impact on trade and economic ties, promising enormous benefits for both countries. Donald Trump is keen to see a breakthrough achieved during his presidency. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin supported this approach.”
Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on how to end the war, the deadliest in Europe since World War II, and both sides have escalated their attacks on each other in recent months. A person close to the Kremlin, speaking before the trip by Trump’s envoys, said Putin remained intent on taking full control of the remainder of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, something Kyiv has vowed to continue fiercely opposing with every weapon at its disposal.
Ushakov — who said Putin and Trump had also agreed on the need to continue prisoner exchanges – said he was not able to get into more detail about what had been discussed, but described the conversation as constructive and said the two leaders had agreed they would stay in touch and speak to each other by phone again if the need arose.
He said Putin had told Trump that Russia had no hostile intentions when it came to Europe despite repeated claims to the contrary by various European politicians.
“In light of speculation regarding Russia’s alleged hostile intentions towards European states, it was emphasised that we have absolutely no aggressive plans whatsoever towards Europe,” said Ushakov.
“The myths being spread about the Russian threat merely serve as a pretext for Europeans to ramp up their support for Ukraine and their own military spending,” he added.
– DMITRY ANTONOV, Moscow, Russia/Reuters
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Both Moscow and Kyiv halted strikes on their capitals for three days to ensure the security of the US peace negotiators.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged allies to ramp up pressure on Moscow, as well as to provide interceptors to down ballistic missiles, since Kyiv’s stocks of these have run critically low.
Describing the attack as a complex one aimed at causing “as much harm to life as possible”, Zelenskiy said ballistic missiles were still “particularly difficult” to intercept.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed nearly all cruise missiles and two ballistic missiles.
Prior to the talks, Russia had stepped up air attacks on Kyiv and nearby areas to nearly round-the-clock, rather than mainly at night, using faster jet-propelled drones that killed residents and disrupted activities.
The Russian defence ministry said Moscow hit military and logistic targets in Kyiv and the surrounding region, as well as in the Black Sea port of Chornomorsk, Russian news agencies said.
A woman with a child walks at the site of a Russian missile strike, leaving a shelter, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine on 8th September, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters/Yan Dobronosov
Attacks on passenger trains
Aside from Kyiv, eight other regions were targeted, Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said. Close to 100 people were evacuated after Russian drones hit a train in the northern Sumy region, he said.
Two people were killed and three injured in Kyiv region outside the capital, the region’s Governor, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Telegram.
The head of Ukrainian rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia said another commuter train was hit in the region. Passengers had been evacuated but not all were at a safe distance and some suffered shrapnel wounds, he said.
A railway worker was killed in a Russian double-tap drone strike on a passenger train in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, emergency services said, adding that all passengers were evacuated.
Three people were wounded in an attack on a market on the outskirts of the Black Sea port city of Odesa, the Governor said.
In Moldova, on Ukraine’s western border, where Russian drones have regularly fallen, authorities said one drone had come down and set fire to a field. A second had flown through Moldovan airspace for 17 minutes and then entered Romanian airspace.
In Kyiv, residents gathering near a heavily damaged apartment block said the let-up in attacks had allowed them to briefly forget the war.
“When foreign guests come to visit us, it’s always quiet here. You kind of relax, exhale, feel calm … It was so peaceful, as if there wasn’t a war at all,” supermarket worker Yana, 19, told Reuters.
“And then they left, and everything went back to normal. Russia gathers all its strength and, with more drones and ballistic missiles, starts bombing Kyiv again,” she said.
Long-range strikes
As the front lines remain largely static, both Russia and Ukraine have intensified long-range air strikes in recent months. Ukraine has targeted Russian oil infrastructure and warehouses of online retailers in an attempt to raise the cost to Moscow of continuing the war.
Both deny deliberately targeting civilians.
In Russia, Ukrainian drones damaged civilian infrastructure in the city of Saratov, while five people were killed in Ukrainian attacks on the Russia-annexed Crimea, as well as in the Bryansk and Kursk regions, local officials said.
– Reporting by Reuters in Kyiv, JEKATERĪNA GOLUBKOVA in Tokyo, Japan; and, ALEXANDER TANAS in Chisinau, Moldova