Russia is ready to resume three-way talks with Ukraine and the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in an interview with Pavel Zarubin of state broadcaster VGTRK, published on 22 October. He said they should settle security for both countries after a final peace deal, not a brief pause.

Putin spoke a day after he hosted US envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would accept freezing the war along the front line. In May, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov named Ukraine’s withdrawal from Donbas and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts as the only condition for peace. Any new round would start from that gap: Kyiv offers to stop where the armies stand, while Moscow’s last stated terms demanded more land.

Talks in November

Putin stated that Moscow and Washington had agreed Russia was ready to resume trilateral contacts. He added that he generally agreed with a US point that European security architecture should also be discussed.

On 21 October, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov stated that the sides had settled on mid-November, with Abu Dhabi as the likely venue.

"Historical Russia"

In a 21 October Fox News interview, asked about a freeze leaving Ukraine 75% or more of its land, Zelenskyy answered: “Yes, right now, we have to freeze.”

Asked about the land Ukraine would give up, Putin replied that the occupied regions were not Ukraine’s but "historical Russia." He claimed their residents had voted for independence and then to join Russia, and called any talk of territorial losses inappropriate.

Putin linked Russia’s readiness to negotiate to Ukrainians being a people very close to Russians. He claimed the latest genetic studies show they are one people. Independent outlet Meduza noted it is unclear which studies he meant. Putin’s 12 July 2021 essay on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians made the same case, which Ukraine’s national memory institute rebutted.

He closed that answer by asserting Russia would achieve all the goals of what the Kremlin calls its special military operation. He made a similar vow on 17 December 2025.

Russian missiles and drones killed one person and injured 24 in Kyiv overnight on 22 October, the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office said. Damage spread across six of the city’s districts, the city military administration reported.

The strike came hours after Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Putin had told Witkoff that Russia was “in principle” ready to resume three-way talks with the US and Ukraine in mid-November. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy read the overnight attack as a sign that Russia’s attitude has not changed. A day earlier, Russian drones killed two people in a 24-story Kyiv apartment block.

21 ballistic missiles in three waves

Russia fired 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight, Zelenskyy said. The barrage came in three waves, around 22:00, at about 02:00, and around 03:30.

Across Ukraine, air defenses downed or suppressed 181 of 210 Russian drones, the Air Force said. Its report did not mention any ballistic missiles shot down.

One killed in the Dniprovskyi district

The only death in Kyiv came in the Dniprovskyi district, on the city’s left bank. There, Russian strikes destroyed 13 detached houses on several streets, prosecutors said. Police said the man killed was 48 and that six people were injured in the district, four of them children, the youngest aged five.

Of the injured, five are minors and two are young children, and prosecutors reported acute stress reactions among them. A 16-year-old boy is in hospital with a closed head injury, prosecutors said. Sixteen of the injured were hospitalized, the city military administration said. The final number of injured is still being established.

Ambulance station and monastery damaged

In the Holosiivskyi, Obolonskyi, Pecherskyi, and Sviatoshynskyi districts, the attack damaged eight apartment buildings, prosecutors said. It also damaged a building-supply hypermarket, a restaurant, a monastery building, a post office, and office premises.

In Pecherskyi, Russia damaged an ambulance station and six ambulances, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote. The State Emergency Service said eight people were injured in that district, three of them children, and reported damaged transport infrastructure in the Darnytskyi district.

Bridge closed, metro line split

The strikes damaged metro infrastructure on the Pivdennyi (Southern) Bridge, Kyiv Metro said. As of the morning, green-line trains ran in two sections, Syrets–Vydubychi and Osokorky–Chervonyi Khutir. Inspections and repairs would continue after the all-clear, the metro said.

Oleksii Biloshytskyi, head of Ukraine’s Patrol Police Department, announced that traffic across the bridge toward the left bank was temporarily closed. The city is adding buses on routes 22 and 91, the city administration said. Russian drones had already hit the bridge repeatedly in early October.