Russia pounds Ukraine with drone blitz

Two people were killed and dozens more wounded in a mass Russian drone attack across Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday, as US and Ukrainian negotiators hashed out a post-war plan in the latest round of peace talks.

Moscow has stepped up a winter campaign of strikes on the Ukrainian energy system while also waging a battlefield offensive as Kyiv faces US pressure to secure peace in the nearly four-year-old war.

Zelensky said the Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa regions were targeted in an attack that included over 200 drones. The military said 30 strikes had been recorded across 15 locations.

One person was killed in the second-largest city of Kharkiv, said mayor Ihor Terekhov, who in recent days has reported significant damage to local energy facilities as a result of Russian strikes. 

It was not immediately clear where the second person had died. Major cities including the capital Kyiv have faced blackouts and cuts to heating.