Kyiv hammered by Russian strikes as negotiators head to US

Bloomberg News on Nov 29, 2025

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Russia unleashed an air barrage on Ukraine’s capital overnight, killing at least three people and causing widespread power outages, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s negotiating team heads to the U.S. for talks aimed at bringing an end to the war.

National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov and his negotiating team are on the way to the U.S., Zelenskyy said on X. They are expected to meet Sunday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Florida, according to a U.S. official.

“The American side is demonstrating a constructive approach, and in the coming days it is feasible to flesh out the steps to determine how to bring the war to a dignified end,” Zelenskyy said.

Bloomberg reported Friday that First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya would be among the officials joining Umerov.

Zelenskyy said earlier that about 36 missiles and almost 600 drones were fired by Russian forces overnight. The main targets were energy infrastructure and civilian facilities, with extensive damage and fires in residential buildings, he said.

As well as those killed, at least 29 people were injured in Kyiv with 19 hospitalized, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. Air raid sirens in the capital sounded for almost 12 hours, and half a million people were without power.

Separately, a major oil export facility on Russia’s Black Sea coast was struck overnight, putting a halt to loading, and Ukrainian drone strikes triggered a fire at an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region. Ukraine, which has repeatedly targeted Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities, hasn’t commented on the incident at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium facility.

President Donald Trump is pushing Kyiv to make territorial and other concessions to Moscow in order to end the fighting in the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. After Sunday’s meeting with the Ukrainian team, Witkoff is set to lead a U.S. delegation for talks in Russia next week.

While stutter-steps continue toward a peace deal, including talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Geneva a week ago, Russia continues regular attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets, including housing, in a bid to undermine morale heading into winter.

More than 500,000 consumers in the capital as well as 100,000 in the broader Kyiv region and 8,000 in the Kharkiv region were without electricity on Saturday, the energy ministry said, with hourly power cuts scheduled across all regions and other usage restrictions in place. Other areas of Ukraine under attack overnight included the Chernihiv, Sumy and Poltava regions, the ministry said.

“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X. Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants to prolong the war at any cost,” he added.

Ukraine’s team in Geneva a week ago was led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s long-time chief of staff, who resigned on Friday under a corruption cloud following a raid on his apartment by anti-graft investigators.