Hours after Russia's foreign minister publicly brushed off a rare face-to-face meeting with his German counterpart, Russian drones struck cities across Ukraine overnight into Sunday, killing at least eight people and wounding more than a dozen, according to Ukrainian officials. The death toll — which continued to climb through the day — underscored how little diplomatic progress was made on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, even as Moscow comes under growing pressure over its escalating campaign against NATO's eastern flank.
"You can judge for yourself whether that counts as dialogue"
Saturday's meeting in New York between Russia's Sergey Lavrov and Germany's Johann Wadephul was believed to be the first direct encounter between the two countries' top diplomats since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It was held at the German minister's request, on the sidelines of the General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders.
Lavrov was openly dismissive afterward. Wadephul had "simply reiterated his official position condemning Russia," the Russian minister said, adding: "You can judge for yourself whether that counts as dialogue or not."
A German delegation official said Wadephul had expressed openness to a better relationship — but only if Russia's leadership showed a genuine willingness to end the war in Ukraine. An overwhelming majority of U.N. member nations have repeatedly condemned Moscow's invasion, which the Kremlin still describes as a "special military operation" intended to ensure Russia's security and the rights of Russian speakers.
A deadly night in Kyiv and its suburbs
The diplomacy, such as it was, did nothing to slow the aerial war. In Kyiv, a man was found dead after a Russian drone hit a non-residential building overnight, according to Ukraine's emergency service. Another drone struck a single-story vehicle repair shop, leaving firefighters battling the blaze into the early hours of Sunday.
Later in the day, further drone strikes on the capital's outskirts killed one person and wounded at least five, according to the head of the Kyiv regional military administration, Tymur Tkachenko. In the town of Vyshneve, one person died and four were injured when a drone damaged five vehicles and set off a blaze; near Fastiv, a security guard at a window manufacturing facility was hurt. Inside Kyiv itself, a drone hit a nine-story apartment block, wounding at least one woman, municipal authorities said.
Strikes were also reported in Zaporizhzhia, where rescue workers pulled bodies from damaged residential neighbourhoods, and in the southern Odesa region, which surrounds Ukraine's main Black Sea port. Russian forces hit Odesa multiple times overnight into Sunday, killing one person and injuring two others, according to the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Kiper.
A Russian claim from Enerhodar
In Russian-occupied Ukraine, Kyiv's forces also struck back. The Kremlin-installed mayor of Enerhodar, the town that houses Europe's largest nuclear plant, claimed a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday killed a civilian woman and wounded two other people. The claim could not be independently verified.
A widening pattern of escalation
The failed de-escalation bid comes amid a broader souring of Russian-German ties, after what Berlin says was an attempted drone attack last month at Leipzig airport that it blames on the Kremlin.
With front-line positions largely unchanged since last year, Moscow has in recent months hammered Ukraine with cruise and ballistic missiles, powerful glide bombs and jet-powered drones. Kyiv, for its part, has answered with long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and businesses — a campaign that has deepened fuel shortages across Russia and sharpened the war's economic pressure on the Kremlin.
For now, though, the night's body count tells the familiar story: when diplomats talk and nothing changes, Ukrainians keep dying.
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