Kyiv came under a major wave of Russian drone attacks on Wednesday, with strikes damaging railway infrastructure, warehouses and fuel stations just hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky met US President Donald Trump to discuss efforts to end the war.
City authorities said at least two people were killed and 22 others injured in the morning assault. It was among the most intense attacks on Kyiv and surrounding areas since Russia began deploying faster, high-flying jet-powered drones over the summer—aircraft that are more difficult to intercept.
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Residents reported powerful explosions as smoke rose over the city centre.
“This is the view from the windows of the EU Delegation today. Buildings nearby are burning,” Katarina Mathernova, the EU ambassador to Ukraine, said in a social media post.
Just entered my office and heard a very loud bang. A jet powered drone hit an object just behind a building seen from my office windrow.
This follows on earlier hits this morning, also close to Delegation.
Also two gasoline station were hit in Kyiv city.
This russian… pic.twitter.com/bfwBI7Erjt
— Katarina Mathernova (@kmathernova) September 23, 2026
During his talks with Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky raised the possibility of a bilateral ceasefire covering energy infrastructure and appealed for additional US Patriot air defence missiles. He said the weapons were needed ahead of an expected Russian winter campaign targeting Ukraine’s electricity network.
Mr Zelensky said the meeting produced no agreements.
He nevertheless said he was prepared to pursue “any format” of an energy ceasefire with Moscow, provided Russia stopped attacking Ukrainian infrastructure.
The Kremlin said today that the conditions for renewed peace talks with Ukraine had not yet emerged and that no high-level meetings were currently planned.
Volodymyr Zelensky discussed a potential bilateral ceasefire on energy-related targets with Donald Trump
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the drone strikes hit a nine-storey non-residential building, a business centre and several warehouses.
Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s state oil company, said one of its petrol stations in the capital had been struck. It was the sixth facility operated by the company to come under attack in recent weeks.
Authorities said two petrol stations were hit in all. Reuters TV footage showed one of the badly damaged sites beside a busy motorway.
Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, chief executive of Ukraine’s railway operator, said railway facilities in Kyiv had also been targeted and that one employee was injured.
Elsewhere, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the State Department said yesterday.
Poland and Belarus hold rare meeting
The foreign ministers of EU member Poland and Russian-allied Belarus also held talks on the margins of the UN General Assembly, marking the neighbours’ first high-level meeting in a decade. Warsaw said today that the encounter could open the way to improved relations.
Relations between Minsk and Warsaw have been largely frozen for years, strained by political repression in Belarus, a migration crisis along their shared border and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Poland, a NATO member, and Belarus, an isolated state led by President Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, have endured years of heightened tensions.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told Warsaw’s TVP TV station that he met his Belarusian counterpart Maxim Ryzhenkov on the “neutral territory” of the UN.
“We have, more than in the past, a normalised situation on the border,” he said.
“We also have the liberations of prisoners, including Andrzej Poczobot,” Mr Sikorski added, referring to the Polish-Belarusian journalist freed by Minsk this year.
“So the neighbours have more reasons to try to stabilise their relations.”
“This is the first, introductory meeting, but meetings are also taking place at other levels.
“We will soon be opening a new embassy building in Minsk. When a neighbour wishes to thaw and improve relations, Poland is always first to agree.”
Belarus’s foreign ministry, quoted by state news agency Belta, said the talks “focused on assessing the state of Belarusian-Polish ties and paths for their further development in the interests of the peoples of both countries”.
Belarusian authorities crushed mass protests against Mr Lukashenko in 2020. Hundreds of people remain imprisoned, while thousands have gone into exile, most of them in Poland.
Two years later, Minsk permitted Moscow to use Belarusian territory as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine.
