Russia launches deadliest missile attacks across Ukraine

Russia launched its largest barrage of drones and missiles in a month across Ukraine, killing at least three people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday, as a Kyiv delegation heads to the United States for fresh peace talks, reports CNN.   

A flurry of diplomacy is taking place after a plan put forward by US President Donald Trump triggered alarm in Kyiv, as the original draft heavily favored Russia. 

The talks will be led from the Ukrainian side by Rustem Umerov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, who Zelensky 
appointed following the resignation of his top aide on Friday. The Ukrainian delegation will build on developments from meetings in Geneva, where Kyiv and its European allies put forward a counter-proposal, Zelensky said. 

Moscow launched around 36 missiles and almost 600 drones at Ukraine on Friday night into Saturday, the Ukrainian president said. Large parts of the capital, Kyiv, are without power. 

"The main targets of the attack were energy infrastructure and civilian facilities, with extensive damage and fires in residential buildings. We currently have reports of dozens injured and three killed," Zelensky said. 

The Ukrainian Air Force said defense forces had shot down the bulk of the projectiles fired as of Saturday morning - the majority of them Iranian-made Shahed drones and Russian long-range Gerbera drones. 

The strikes hit the homes of ordinary Ukrainians as well as the country's energy grid and critical infrastructure, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Telegram on Saturday morning, calling it "a difficult night… particularly in Kyiv." 

Two people, including a 42-year-old man, were killed in the capital and 15 were wounded, including a child, local authorities and police said. The third person, a 74-year-old woman, was killed in the Kyiv region, local authorities said. 

Kyiv was under an air raid alert for more than ten hours overnight into Saturday, CNN reporters in the city said, with drones and loud explosions audible in the skies overhead.