Ukraine fires nearly 1,200 drones at Russia as US-led talks consider wider European security

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Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets overnight in one of its biggest aerial attacks since Moscow’s invasion nearly five years ago.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets overnight in one of its biggest aerial attacks since Moscow’s invasion nearly five years ago.

Meanwhile, negotiators raised the stakes in talks to stop the fighting by including for discussion wider European security arrangements that have been in place since the end of the Cold War. That has alarmed European leaders and placed a question mark over NATO’s future role.

After two days of talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week, U.S. envoys went in person to brief Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was meeting with European Union leaders in Dublin, Ireland.

Further talks are planned as negotiators seek a breakthrough in peace efforts, according to U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Kushner said Russia has agreed to include Europe in upcoming talks, after Moscow’s long insistence that the continent’s governments were part of the problem because they were supporting Ukraine.

Europe’s presence at the negotiating table will allow negotiators “to address the broader postwar European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia,” Kushner said on X.

As European leaders scrambled to find an envoy to the talks, they were also wary of Russian maneuvering as well as Trump’s praise for Putin and his administration’s sharp criticism of Europe.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said Friday that Europe must insist on a ceasefire before taking the negotiations further — the opposite of what Putin demands.

“If we start to talk about what Russia is asking regarding the security architecture, we actually walk into the traps that Russia is setting us,” she said in Dublin.

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