Russia continued its pattern of relentless attacks on Kyiv overnight, killing at least seven people, including a 14-year-old boy, and injuring dozens more in a drone strike on an apartment building in the capital on September 25, Ukrainian authorities said.
Russian forces also targeted the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhya and the Black Sea port city of Odesa, where officials said one man was killed and another injured. Residential and commercial buildings were damaged and rescue efforts were delayed by frequent air-raid alerts.
In Russia, officials said Ukrainian drone strikes killed two people in a car in the border region of Belgorod and one man in the Perm region, where Kyiv may have been targeting a major oil refinery as part of its campaign of attacks on Russian energy infrastructure that fuels and finances its war against Ukraine.
Russian authorities also reported damage to the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in the Rostov region, which suspended operations; infrastructure in the Ulyanovsk region, where they said eight people were injured; a factory in the Voronezh region, where they said 13 people were injured, two of them seriously.
A drone strike damaged the locomotive and first car of a passenger train in the Samara region, officials said. The driver was injured and rail traffic on the line suspended.
Russia has been hammering Kyiv for weeks while also continuing drone and missile across Ukraine, including strikes targeting energy and transportation infrastructure.
Metals giant ArcelorMittal announced on September 25 that it is "no longer able to safely operate" its factory in Kriviy Rih, Ukraine's largest steel plant, after a series of missile attacks over the past five weeks killed five people, injured 17 others, and caused "extensive damage to production facilities."
The Luxembourg-based company will "focus on preserving the infrastructure, so when peace finally returns, options for restarting production remain available," it said.
Ukraine is struggling to defend itself as supplies of air defense systems dwindle, in part because the United States has used many of its Patriot missiles in the war with Iran.
In recorded comments to journalists on September 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his US counterpart Donald Trump told him when they met in New York this week that he had made a "final decision" to let Ukraine produce Patriot missiles -- an issue on which Washington had previously sent mixed signals.
"At our last meeting, President Trump emphasized to me that yes, I have made a final decision. Ukraine will receive licenses for the production of Patriot missiles," he said.
The latest attacks, five months short of the five-year mark in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, come as concerns about spillover into neighboring nations and Russian sabotage and interference operations in Europe -- and as a US effort to broker a cease-fire or peace deal shows few signs of progress.
Zelenskyy told journalists the US has proposed what would be the first Ukraine-Russia-US meeting in many months be held at a relatively low "technical level" and hosted by the United Arab Emirates, with no date suggested so far.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump had discussed such a meeting in a September 8 phone call and that it could potentially happen soon. There was no immediate comment from the US.
Putin said on September 25 that all proposals for resuming negotiations were “on the table” but did not confirm whether Moscow would participate.
While Putin said in separate comments that Russia was not preparing for “any kind” of conflict with Europe, authorities in Moldova, which borders Ukraine’s hard-hit Odesa region, warned that increasingly frequent drone incursions were endangering aviation safety.
Several drones violated Moldovan airspace on September 24 and two of them exploded, but no injuries were reported.
Forty-four of the 81 breaches "involving Russian and Iranian-made missiles and drones" were recorded this year, the Moldovan Defense Ministry said in a press release, adding that airspace was closed in more than 10 instances "due to the danger posed to civil aviation," it added.
Russia's massive attack on Ukraine reached Moldova again this morning: four Russian drones violated our airspace, and at least one exploded in the north," Moldovan President Maia Sandu wrote on X on September 24. "Russia's war endangers all of Europe. We condemn this war and stand with Ukraine."
A plane carrying Zelenskyy from Moldova to Oslo for the funeral of Norway's King Harald earlier this month was delayed due to an airspace violation.
NATO member Romania, which borders Moldova and Ukraine, said a drone crashed near a village on September 24 in the latest of several such incidents.
Further north, Finland and Sweden, both of which joined NATO after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, said they dispatched fighter jets to intercept and identify Russian military aircraft in international airspace over the Gulf of Finland in a joint operation on September 24.
The Swedish and Finnish planes identified a group of Russian aircraft including a transport plane and several fighter jets, the Finnish Air Force said.
"The Baltic Sea has never been as vulnerable as it is now -- but it has also never been better protected than it is right now," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.
Poland scrambled fighter jets and put air defenses on alert when a Russian Mi-8 military helicopter briefly entered its airspace on September 23, an incident the Polish Army said "suggests that Russia is once again testing the readiness of our air defenses."
The Czech military said it dispatched jets for combat air patrol over Poland early on September 24. It said there was no need to use force during the unspecified incident.
