Firefighters deal with a blaze set by Russian strikes on Ukraine, September 26, 2026

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Ukraine War, Day 1,675: Russia’s Strikes Close Largest Steelmaker

UPDATE 1912 GMT:

A Russian jet-powered drone crashed near the Polish-Ukrainian border checkpoint, on the Ukrainian side close to Poland’s Dorohusk-Jagodzin.

The Polish Government Center for Security issued an urgent alert against “threat of an air attack” and told residents in eastern Poland to shelter.

UPDATE 1324 GMT:

The toll has risen to one civilian murdered and 19 injured by Russia’s overnight attacks on Kyiv.

Among the sites struck was the National Academy of Sciences, with one person slain and many staff inside the building.

Academy director Anatoly Zagorodny said, “We are not connected with the military. This is an attack on science. It is terrorism.”

He feared some colleagues might still be inside.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky posted:

Russia will definitely face a response to this.

And every one of Ukraine’s partners must see from this terror, from these strikes, that supporting Ukraine means truly supporting people’s lives – supporting the principle that terror must never be normalised, anywhere. Russia must be held accountable for all of this and face real consequences.

UPDATE, SEPT 28:

Russia has maintained its deadly aerial assault of Kyiv for a fourth consecutive night.

Two people were murdered and eight wounded overnight. The fatalities and four of the injuries were from a strike on the Stolichny wholesale food market just outside of the capital. Flames engulfed vehicles in the parking lot.

Drones damaged a non-residential building in the Podil district, with three people injured in the area. Another person was wounded in the Holosiivskyi district after a drone struck a two-story home.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on Sunday:

If Russia were truly preparing for any real steps toward de-escalation – as it claims, particularly to American negotiators – this wave of “shahed” [drone] terror would not be happening.

And we need to take a sober view of the situation. Russia knows how to send the kind of encouraging diplomatic signals that the world simply wants to hear… It knows how to send such signals in order to delay tough steps by the world in response to the war.

Zelensky called for the implement of the recently-passed US bill for tougher sanctions on Russia, and for measures targeting financial networks, supply chains for the production of Russian weapons, and companies and individuals involved in the production of Moscow’s ballistic missiles.

UPDATE 1351 GMT:

Ukrainian forces have delivered around four tons of food to residents of the occupied frontline city of Oleshky in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.

The forces distributed supplies to 100 locations with the help of drones.

Ukraine has been supplying food by drone since March. However, residents report Oleshky is running critically low on food, and only a few of the 2,000 civilians — including 50 children — have managed to evacuate.

“We’re in Oleshky [and] we can’t get out. We’re going hungry … Right now, I’ve got absolutely nothing to eat,” posted a woman waiting to be evacuated. Before the war, she had weighed 110 kg; now she weighed just 67 kg.

Ukraine’s Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said Russian forces have attempted to disrupt the deliveries, including by shooting down the drones. He accused Russian forces of confiscating or reselling humanitarian supplies: “The occupiers are detaining residents of Oleshky for receiving humanitarian aid parcels, throwing them ‘into the cellar’, beating them brutally and resorting to violence.”

UPDATE 0739 GMT:

At least 14 civilians were murdered and 57 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day.

Air defenses downed 147 of 170 attack drones, 76 of them jet-powered, fired by Russia across Ukraine overnight. Strikes were recorded on 18 locations.

One civilian was murdered and two injured in the Odesa region in southern Ukraine. A residential building, a medical facility, a hotel, a shop, and a grain storage facility were damaged.

In the Zaporizhzhia region in the south, four people were killed and five injured. In the Donetsk region in the east, three civilians were slain and five wounded.

Two people were slain and six injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the southeast, and two were murdered and three wounded in the Kharkiv region in the northeast.

Two civilians were murdered and 23 injured, including four children, by Russian glide bombs on Sumy city in northeast Ukraine on Saturday.

Three children — girls aged 14 and 8 and an 11-month-old infant — and two adults were hospitalized.

The strikes damaged dozens of apartment buildings, a house, a cultural institution, two kindergartens, administrative buildings, and more than 20 vehicles.

Casualties were also reported from the Kyiv, Poltava, and Kherson regions.

UPDATE 0739 GMT:

German and Russian Foreign Ministers have met for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Germany’s Johann Wadephul posted after his encounter with Russia’s Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Saturday: “Russia must end its war of aggression against Ukraine and cease its hostile actions against Germany and its allies.”

He said Germany will back diplomacy if Russia “seriously engages in negotiations towards a sustainable peace.”

Wadephul explained that he was approached beforehand by “numerous colleagues from other countries” who “said Russia was ready for dialogue”. He addressed three topics with Lavrov: grain exports from Ukraine and Russia; the explosive-laden drone intercepted by a worker at Leipzig Airport; and Berlin’s support for Kyiv which is “absolutely unwavering”.

The Foreign Minister proposed to Lavrov “to de-escalate, in particular, taking into account the situation in Ukraine. However, this call has not yet found a response.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the two sides discussed bilateral relations and the war on Ukraine, noting curtly, “Wadephul reaffirmed the position of the German government, which he has repeatedly stated publicly.”

Lavrov dismissively said Wadephul had “complained” to him about the discovery of “some downed drone” in Leipzig. “Looking at Berlin’s daily public statements, I haven’t heard anything new,” he said, declaring that he could have just received a phone call from his German counterpart.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has endured a third consecutive night of Russian airstrikes.

At least one civilian was murdered and four injured overnight.

In the Shevchenkivskyi district, a Russian drone struck an uninhabited residential building around 10 p.m., starting a fire which was brought under control. In the Solomianskyi district, a drone fell in an open area, the blast wave breaking the windows and damaging the face of a five-story residential building. A fire also broke out in a warehouse and a car service center after drone strikes.

Early on Sunday morning, a woman and two 16-year-old children were injured in a strike on a non-residential building in the Shevchenkivskyi district.

In his nightly address to the nation, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said:

Obviously, the Russians are not preparing to stop their war, at least for now. Putin always finds some lame excuse – not to meet, not to hold a trilateral, not to talk, not to end it, not to stop the killing… It has been the same with him for years – and all our partners feel it. He is looking for excuses to keep waging the war. It always sounds the same – and our recent meeting with the U.S. President showed that.

Zelensky asserted that “America sees the situation the same way”, joining “with Europe, with Canada, with Japan, and with many others around the world” to help Ukraine.

He called for enforcement of the recently-passed US legislation for tougher sanctions and for “other mechanisms of pressure” on Russia.