Ukrainian forces targeted Moscow in the early hours of Tuesday with what Russian authorities are describing as the largest ever drone attack on the Russian capital.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that it downed 337 drones overnight with 91 one of those unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) coming down in the Moscow region, with at least two people killed in the city, fires sparked, and air and rail travel suspended amid the disruption.
Even so, the bombardment of at least 10 Russian regions came as Ukraine headed into pivotal talks with the United States on Tuesday in a tough spot.
At the negotiating table, President Donald Trump and his team are demanding significant concessions, while publicly asking little of their Russian counterparts despite the president saying he was considering additional sanctions on Moscow. On the battlefield, Kremlin forces are pushing back Ukrainian troops who had launched a counter invasion into Russian soil.
Russia’s own strikes against Ukraine continued, with Kyiv’s armed forces saying early Tuesday they had shot down 114 Russian drones, even as Kyiv carried out an overnight attack that Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said was the “largest” Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow.
Ukrainian officials had yet to respond to NBC News requests for comment on the Moscow strikes.
Several airports including Sheremetyevo imposed flight restrictions in the hours after the attack, with Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova pointing out that the attack came as a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that included the security watchdog’s secretary general, Feridun Sinirlioglu, visited Moscow.
In a statement posted on Telegram she said that “this is not the first time that a high-ranking foreign delegation’s visit has been accompanied by a Ukrainian Armed Forces’ drone attack.”
Diplomatic talks
It’s against this volatile backdrop that Ukrainian officials will meet U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Tuesday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hope the meeting goes some way to repair frayed ties with Washington following his dramatic Oval Office argument with Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
“We hope for practical outcomes,” Zelenskyy said Monday of the upcoming summit between Rubio and his team. “Ukraine’s position in these talks will be fully constructive.”
On Monday, the Ukrainian leader met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the host of the talks who is attempting to position his kingdom as something of a diplomatic superpower.
“We had a detailed discussion on the steps and conditions needed to end the war and secure a reliable and lasting peace,” Zelenskyy said of that meeting.
Describing his reaction to the extraordinary shouting match in the Oval Office, Rubio told journalists while en-route to Jeddah that “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was like ‘this can’t be real’ but it was, but we have to move on.”
On Tuesday’s meeting, Rubio added that “we’re not going to be sitting in a room drawing lines on a map, but just get a general sense of what concessions are in the realm of the possible for [Ukraine] and what they would need in return.”
Battlefield losses
Ukraine had hoped that a counter invasion into Russia’s Kursk region, which it launched in November, might serve as a potent bargaining chip during the talks. However, even that has been called into question, with Russian forces “collapsing” some of the gains made by Ukraine “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.
In Kyiv, there was some hope that the Saudi talks might produce a resolution to this grinding conflict. But also the informed realization that things will not be easy for their embattled country.
“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 non-governmental 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 and pausing intelligence sharing with Kyiv last week.
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.”
Alexander Smith reported from London. Artem Grudinin reported from Kyiv.
