Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a 72-hour halt to strikes on Kyiv as U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Moscow to revive stalled peace talks. The pause is tied to a planned envoy visit to Kyiv on Sunday, even as Russian strikes elsewhere in Ukraine killed five people and wounded five more at an industrial site.
The Kremlin said Saturday that Putin ordered no strikes on Kyiv for three days, starting at midnight, according to presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. Peskov tied the decision to preparations for the Witkoff and Kushner visit to Kyiv, which Kyiv has said will take place Sunday.
Envoys retrace a stalled peace push
Witkoff and Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, last visited Moscow in January, when they met Putin at the Kremlin. Neither envoy had visited Kyiv before this trip. Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev met the delegation at the airport and shared photos of the arrival, captioned "Welcome to Moscow Peacemakers."
Washington's push to end the war, now in its fifth year, had lost momentum as U.S. attention shifted for six months to the war with Iran. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that Ukraine would halt its own airstrikes during the envoys' visit and urged Moscow to match the move. He later linked overnight Russian strikes on Kyiv and Boryspil airports to preparations for the U.S. delegation's travel.
Diplomacy proceeds against a backdrop of intensifying attacks. Russia has struck Kyiv and other cities with bombardments stretching into daylight hours, exploiting Ukraine's shortage of air defense systems, while a Russian drone hit the headquarters of Ukraine's Security Service on Friday. Ukraine's own long-range strikes have hit Russian military facilities, refineries and e-commerce hubs.
Strikes kill five at a Dnipropetrovsk industrial site
Russian attacks killed five people and wounded five more at an industrial facility in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, regional military administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said, describing the dead as workers doing their shift when missiles struck. Russia's defense ministry said it had hit two metallurgical plants in the region that supply metal for Ukraine's military production. A separate strike on the region's Nikopol district wounded a 62-year-old man and damaged homes and an apartment building.
Elsewhere, an overnight attack on Ukraine's Kyiv region wounded two people and a fire partially destroyed a nine-story building in the Boryspil district, regional official Tymur Tkachenko said. Drones repeatedly struck a shopping center in the Mykolaiv region, hurting a 72-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl and forcing emergency crews to withdraw amid further strike threats.
Drone exchanges intensify along the front
Russia launched ballistic missiles and deployed 167 attack drones overnight, including jet-powered Shahed-type and Geran drones, of which Ukraine's air force said it shot down or suppressed 128. Ukrainian strikes wounded three people, including a 14-year-old girl, in Russia's Belgorod region, while Russia's defense ministry said it downed 53 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Source: CNBC
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