Ukraine fires nearly 1,200 drones at Russia as talks widen to Europe's security

Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets overnight in one of its largest aerial attacks since Moscow's full-scale invasion nearly five years ago, Russian and Ukrainian officials said, in a barrage that coincided with a widening of U.S.-led peace talks to cover the future of Europe's entire post-Cold War security order. Russia's Defense Ministry said its air defenses shot down 1,198 Ukrainian long-range drones between late Thursday and early Friday. Even so, local officials said strikes on three Russian regions killed seven people, including a 12-year-old, and wounded 17.

Ukraine's General Staff said its forces hit an oil refinery in the Russian city of Volgograd, starting a fire at a facility it said can process about 110 million barrels a year. Kyiv has repeatedly struck Russian refineries and claimed last month to have neutralized more than half of Russia's refining capacity. The scale of the overnight assault appeared designed to demonstrate that Ukraine can still hit back hard, countering Moscow's insistence that a Russian victory is inevitable as negotiators haggle over the terms of a settlement.

Talks widen to Europe's security architecture

The attacks came as the diplomacy took a consequential turn. After two days of talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week, U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was in Dublin meeting European leaders. At Moscow's long-standing demand, the negotiators agreed to discuss wider European security arrangements alongside the territorial questions between Ukraine and Russia — an expansion that has alarmed European governments and raised questions about NATO's future role. More talks are planned, the envoys said.

Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump's son-in-law, said Russia had agreed to include Europe in the upcoming talks, reversing Moscow's insistence that the continent's governments be excluded because they backed Ukraine. Europe's presence, he said, would allow negotiators "to address the broader postwar European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia." European Council President Antonio Costa said a team of diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the European Union would be sent to the talks after a summit in Dublin dominated by European efforts to avoid being sidelined.

European leaders push back

In Dublin, the pushback was blunt. "Russia wants to talk about questions of European security architecture. We don't need to talk about that. There is one," German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, referring to NATO. The EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, warned that Europe must insist on a ceasefire before negotiations go further — the opposite of what Putin demands — and said discussing Russia's demands would mean walking "into the traps that Russia is setting us." Luxembourg's Prime Minister Luc Frieden insisted that Europe must take its fate into its own hands and cannot let the Americans or the Russians decide its future.

The Institute for the Study of War assessed on Thursday that Moscow is aiming "to dismantle NATO and the post-Cold War European security architecture." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia remained open to contacts with the Europeans, adding that once Moscow understood Europe's "true intentions and their readiness to facilitate the peace process," a decision could be made on holding dialogue in an expanded format. European leaders are also wary of Trump's praise for Putin and his administration's sharp criticism of Europe, and the Dublin meeting was dominated by their efforts to shape a process they fear could be settled over their heads.

Starshield limits and a grid under fire

Even as he traveled, Zelenskyy renewed a complaint with direct battlefield consequences: speed restrictions on the U.S. Starshield system, SpaceX's military-grade version of Starlink, are limiting Ukrainian drones to 161 kilometers per hour (100 mph) along the entire front line and in Russian-occupied territory, making it impossible, he said, to deploy interceptor drones effectively against Moscow's fast-moving jet-powered drones. "We still have no clear explanations," he said of the unannounced restrictions, and Ukrainian officials are asking the State Department, the Pentagon and SpaceX to clarify and resolve the situation. Elon Musk acknowledged in October that SpaceX had throttled the service for about a week.

Russia, meanwhile, launched 117 drones against Ukraine overnight, killing at least two people, including a 17-year-old, authorities said, and a single attack on southern Zaporizhzhia hit two five-story apartment buildings and wounded 30 people, including six children. Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure caused power outages across about half of the country's regions on Friday, its first deputy energy minister said, as Moscow resumed its winter campaign against the grid. Along a front line of about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles), Kyiv's forces are increasingly using drones and ground robots to defend against a larger Russian army — a war of machines now shaping both the battlefield and the bargaining table.