KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia and Ukraine exchanged airstrikes overnight as the second day of talks on Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction and security guarantees once the fighting ends wrapped up in Brussels on Thursday.
The latest Russian aerial barrage underscored the scale of the rebuilding task, as did the continuing search for people missing beneath the rubble after a deadly airstrike in southern Ukraine on Monday.
Ukraine launched hundreds of drones
at Russian targets. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down nearly 500 drones overnight.
A Ukrainian attack on a bus killed five people and wounded 13 others Thursday in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Luhansk region, according to Leonid Pasechnik, the region’s Moscow-backed leader. Further details were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, rescue teams continued searching for more than 30 people believed trapped in the wreckage of a former school and a nearby shelter hit by Russian guided bombs on Monday. The attack in Komyshuvakha, near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, struck as residents waited for humanitarian aid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 43 people had been confirmed dead. In a message on X, he said one person previously reported missing had been found alive.
The second day of talks wrapped up at NATO headquarters in Brussels as officials from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and the European Union discussed postwar reconstruction, funding for 2027 and security guarantees backed by the Ukrainian government's Western allies.
Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said that representatives from the World Bank and the U.S. investment group BlackRock were also present. “We separately discussed the threats from Russia to Ukraine and all of Europe, as well as joint steps to counter them,” Umerov wrote in an online post.
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and peace envoy, described the meeting as “productive and substantive."
The Brussels meetings are taking place days before negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States are due to meet in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for talks aimed at trying to end the war. Late Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that he had held a 90-minute conversation with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“The negotiations must move forward at full throttle to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X. “Ukraine is ready to take the necessary steps. Our proposals are clear, and we have given them to the American side.”
In excerpts from an interview with German broadcaster ZDF, to be aired in full on Friday, Zelenskyy expressed hope that the Democratic Party's win in the U.S. midterm elections could usher in a new era of support for Ukraine.
“We have support from two parties — support from both parties. I am also grateful to the Republicans,” Zelenskyy said. He added that the Democrats “speak of renewing the ties between the U.S. and Europe, which have been somewhat lost in recent years. And that is very important to us.”
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told The Associated Press that the midterm results could change the atmosphere in Washington.
“The understanding that Russia is an aggressive country and is not serving U.S. interests” may become more prevalent on Capitol Hill after the elections, Tsahkna said in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital.
But “the president is President Trump,” he added, and Trump can dictate foreign and security policy. Ukraine’s situation will depend in part on Trump’s actions, Tsahkna said, and the president may feel freer to act because he is not running for reelection.
“Unpredictability” should be expected, he said.
The European Commission on Thursday sent Ukraine 4.4 billion euros ($4.9 billion) as part of a 90 billion euro ($100 billion) loan agreed in April by EU leaders to support the embattled nation.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the money will help Ukraine fund essential spending on defense and public services.
“As Russia continues its relentless attacks, Ukraine is about to start its fifth wartime winter,” she said. “And as efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace for Ukraine continue, so too does the EU’s unwavering support.”
Ukraine’s air defenses shot down or suppressed 105 of 128 Russian attack drones overnight and into early Thursday, while Russian strikes wounded four people in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian drones struck six areas in the Dnipropetrovsk region, wounding three people in the city of Dnipro, regional administrator Oleksandr Hanzha said. A Russian attack on logistics infrastructure west of the capital, Kyiv, caused a fire and wounded a man, the State Emergency Service said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that its forces shot down 496 Ukrainian drones over 13 Russian regions overnight, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia, and the Black and Azov Seas.
More than 200 Ukrainian drones targeted Russia’s Ryazan region southeast of Moscow, wounding one person, local governor Pavel Malkov said.
Malkov said that falling debris from the attack damaged power lines and sparked a fire at an industrial site. Russian media outlets later reported a blaze at the Ryazan oil refinery, sharing pictures of plumes of smoke and the night sky glowing red.
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Farnoush Amiri in New York, Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, and Emma Burrows in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
