Moscow’s bombardment came as Ukraine headed into talks in a tough spot. President Donald Trump’s team is demanding concessions, while the Kremlin pushes back Ukrainian troops.
As American and Ukrainian officials met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia for talks on ending Russia’s invasion, Kyiv and Moscow were counting the costs from a night of firing hundreds of missiles and drones at each other.
Russia resumed its almost nightly strikes on Ukraine, whose defenses shot down 114 drones, Ukrainian officials said. But more surprising was the massive wave of drones Kyiv launched on Moscow, which Russian authorities called the largest such attack on the capital.
The Russian Defense Ministry said it downed 337 Ukrainian drones, 91 of which came down in the Moscow region. Two people were killed, 18 were injured, and air and rail travel faced huge disruptions.
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
“We have to understand the Ukrainian position and just have a general idea of what concessions they would be willing to make,” Rubio told reporters on the plane to Saudi Arabia on Monday. “You’re not going to get a ceasefire and an end to this war unless both sides make concessions.”
During the talks themselves, none of the officials responded to questions from the media, with Rubio and Waltz smiling for the cameras while their Ukrainian counterparts remained stony-faced. The meeting was an attempt to salvage relations between Kyiv and Washington following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s high-profile Oval Office argument with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Zelenskyy himself traveled to Saudi Arabia on Monday to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman but left before Rubio’s talks started.
Trump last week threatened Moscow with “large-scale sanctions” to force it into negotiations. But his administration has received widespread criticism from leaders across Europe for demanding concessions from Ukraine while asking little from Russia in return.
Trump cut off military aid and intelligence following the Oval Office shouting match, which Rubio said Monday “broadly is something I hope we can resolve” in Tuesday’s talks.
Ukraine has attempted to push Russia back militarily, both on the frontlines and in the air. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the drone strike on his city the “largest” such attack on the Russian capital.
American podcaster Lex Fridman posted to X on Tuesday that he was in Moscow and that the “mass drone attack hit very close to where I am located.” He added that “when I traveled to Ukraine, there were a few close calls. And same in Moscow now. These are not actions of two sides that are pushing for peace.”
Ukrainian officials had yet to respond to NBC News requests for comment on the Moscow strikes.
With peace on the agenda in Jeddah, Ukraine’s attack was likely intended to show the Kremlin what will happen if it doesn’t agree to a ceasefire “while also sending the message that they still have such capacities despite the U.S. military and intel-sharing pause,” said Michael Horowitz, head of intelligence at Le Beck, a Bahrain-based security consultancy.
Ukraine had likewise hoped to gain a similar bargaining chip by launching a counter-invasion into Russia’s Kursk region in November, analysts say.
But Russian forces have pared back some of Ukraine’s territorial gains “following several days of intensified Russian activity in the area,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank that tracks the conflict daily, said Sunday.
“Moscow knows they will be in a much better position to demand additional territories in Ukraine if the Kursk pocket is back under their control once talks start,” Horowitz added.
In Kyiv, there was some hope that the Saudi talks might produce a resolution but also the realization that it will not be easy.
“In the last week, Europe and Ukraine have ceased to perceive the U.S. as a reliable ally,” said Slobodian Liliya, 29, who works for a nongovernmental organization. “These negotiations will show how much this perception corresponds to the position of the new U.S. administration.”
There is still much disbelief at why Washington, in their view, appears to be rewarding the aggressor by favoring negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Serhiy Myroshnichenko, 35, a photographer from Kyiv, questioned why Washington and Moscow are “still making decisions about what will happen to Ukraine, considering Russia started this all and must bear responsibility for everything it has done?”
“This raises a lot of questions,” he added, “specifically for President Trump rather than for the country of the United States as a whole.”
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