Kyiv toll rises to two dead and 34 wounded as Russia fires 21 ballistic missiles and Putin sets his terms for talks

By daylight, the Kyiv attack looked like what President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was. A deliberate strike on the city itself. Ukrainian officials raised the toll through the day to at least two dead and 34 wounded, including five children, as of October 22. The earlier count of six wounded, carried this morning, was the first hours figure and it did not hold.

Zelensky said Russia fired hundreds of drones and at least 21 ballistic missiles, and that at least three of the missiles carried cluster munitions, weapons banned by many countries because their bomblets scatter over a wide area and keep killing after the strike. The blows landed in the historic center and across several districts. Homes, shops, cafes, office buildings, an ambulance station, monastery buildings, energy sites and a bridge over the Dnipro River were hit, and traffic on the bridge was restricted. Ukraine said the attacks were recorded in a dozen regions. Ukraine also launched drones toward Moscow overnight, in one of its largest reported operations against the Russian capital.

The timing is the fact that will not go away. Hours earlier, in St Petersburg, American envoy Steve Witkoff had praised President Vladimir Putin as a humanitarian after Russia agreed to release Stephen Hubbard, a 74 year old former American service member captured in Ukraine, and Moscow said it was open in principle to resuming three way talks. You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian, Witkoff told Putin. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that.

On Thursday, Putin stated his price in public. Interviewed on Russian television, he confirmed Russia is ready to resume American mediated talks next month, and said the goal must be security guarantees for Ukraine and Russia in their final form, reached as part of a settlement that ends the conflict, not a temporary ceasefire. He said Witkoff agreed the talks have to cover the architecture of European security as a whole. Well, let us see how things develop in the coming days, Putin said.

Zelensky, who met Witkoff in Norway on Tuesday, said Ukraine is ready for talks likely by early next month and supports proposals for a ceasefire, an end to the war, an energy ceasefire and humanitarian steps. He has also said Ukraine would accept freezing the war along the current front lines. Russia still demands that Ukraine give up all of the Donbas in the east. Kyiv refuses to hand over land it still holds. The talks channel stalled in February when the American and Israeli war with Iran began. It is open again. So is the missile war, on the same day, and that is the state of the diplomacy. (This story runs without a picture.)