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Here is where things stand on Saturday, May 24:
Fighting
- At least 14 people were injured in one of the biggest combined drone and ballistic missile attacks to date on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, according to city officials, and witnesses reported a series of explosions and waves of Russian drones flying over the city.
- Ukraine’s air force said that Moscow launched 250 long-range drones and 14 ballistic missiles overnight. It said it down 245 of the Shahed-type drones and six of the Iskander ballistic missiles. It was unclear if the remaining drones and missiles hit its targets.
- Anti-aircraft units were activated across the Ukrainian capital following the attack at dawn. Timur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said two fires had broken out in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi district. Drone fragments also hit the ground in four districts.
- At least two people were killed in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa after Russia struck port infrastructure with missiles, according to authorities.
- Three people were killed in shelling incidents in different parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of the war’s front line, authorities said.
- Russia has accused Ukraine of launching a massive wave of drone attacks, numbering up to 800, against non-military targets in Moscow and other regions in the last three days and said it would respond, but said it was still committed to holding peace talks with Kyiv.
- Ukraine’s military said that it had hit a battery-manufacturing facility in Russia’s Lipetsk region, which it said supplied Russian missile and bomb manufacturers. It added that the batteries were used in aerial bombs, cruise missiles and the Iskander-M ballistic missile.
- A Russian military helicopter has crashed near the village of Naryshkino in Russia’s Oryol region, killing the crew, the state news agency TASS reported, citing the Moscow military district headquarters. The preliminary cause of the crash was a technical malfunction.
Politics and diplomacy
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced that Moscow will be ready to hand Ukraine a draft document outlining conditions for a long-term peace accord once a prisoner exchange, now under way, is completed.
- Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told reporters that Kyiv was waiting for Russia’s proposals on the form of talks, a ceasefire and a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
- Sybiha, quoted by Ukrainian media, said Kyiv would be in favour of expanding such a meeting to include United States President Donald Trump.
- Lavrov has cast doubt on the Vatican as a potential place for peace talks with Ukraine. Italy had said Pope Leo XIV was ready to host the peace talks after Trump suggested the Vatican as a location. Italy, the pope and the US had voiced hope the city-state could host the talks.
- Russia and Ukraine have each released 390 prisoners of war and said they would free more in the coming days, an initiative agreed in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye last week.
- Putin has declared in televised remarks that Russia needs to strengthen its position in the global arms market by increasing exports of weapons.
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to back Western efforts towards a Ukraine truce in his first phone call with China’s leader since Merz took office this month.
Economy
- US credit rating agency Fitch has affirmed Ukraine’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating at “Restricted Default”, as the war-torn nation continues to navigate diplomatic tensions and a significant erosion of its finances amid its grinding war with Russia.
- The International Monetary Fund has started a new review of its $15.5bn programme to Ukraine this week, even as the country failed to reach a deal with GDP-linked debt holders last month.
Russia and Ukraine exchange more prisoners
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more prisoners of war (POWs) as Ukrainian officials renew their calls for more sanctions in response to dozens of attack drones and ballistic missiles launched by Moscow’s forces at Kyiv overnight.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Saturday it released 307 Ukrainian POWs in exchange for as many Russian servicemen, who are being cared for in Belarus before their return to Russia.
Ukraine confirmed the exchange, saying among those returned were army soldiers, agents of the State Border Guard Service, and members of the National Guard of Ukraine.
The two sides released 270 servicemen and 120 civilians each on the Ukrainian border with Belarus on Friday, as part of the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Both sides have agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners, but the aerial attacks and ground fighting have not stopped.
Russia launches attacks from multiple Russian regions
Ukraine’s military on Saturday said overnight attacks launched from multiple Russian regions used 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles to hit Kyiv and other areas, damaging several apartment buildings and a shopping mall, and injuring at least 15 people in the capital.
in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Zaporizhia were also hit, with Ukrainian forces saying six of the ballistic missiles were shot down by their air defences, along with 245 drones, many of which were said to be Iranian-designed.
Four Ukrainians killed and several others injured in Kharkiv Region
Oleh Syniehubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional state administration, said on Saturday morning that four Ukrainians were killed and several others injured over the past 24 hours in the region as a result of multiple Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said at least 100 Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Russian targets overnight. It said 64 unmanned aerial vehicles were downed overnight in the skies of the Belgorod region, along with 10 additional drones launched on Saturday morning.
Dozens more projectiles were downed over Kursk, Lipetsk and Voronezh and another five were shot down over Tver, northwest of Moscow, it said.
‘Difficult night’
In a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country had another “difficult night” that he believes should convince the world that “the reason for the war being dragged out is in Moscow”.
“It is obvious that we need to put much more pressure on Russia to get results and start real diplomacy. We are waiting for sanctions from the US, Europe and all our partners. Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.”
The Group of Seven nations threatened on Friday to impose further sanctions on Russia if it fails to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Moscow yet to send peace memorandum – Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a week after talks in Istanbul, Turkiye, led only to an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war, that Moscow has yet to send any “peace memorandum”.
“Instead, Russia sends deadly drones and missiles at civilians,” he wrote in a post on X, adding that “increased sanctions pressure on Moscow is necessary to accelerate the peace process”.
Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said the Istanbul meeting was disappointing for Zelenskyy because he wanted a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Instead, it was a much lower-level meeting. But they did manage to get this prisoner swap,” he said, adding that the exchanges could be over by Sunday, but the details were not clear.
Zelenskyy disappointed by the lack of additional US sanctions against Russia
“Zelenskyy has been disappointed by the lack of additional US sanctions against Russia. Europe has agreed to new sanctions, but it’s not clear that they will really have the desired effect to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.”