KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets overnight in one of its biggest aerial attacks since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly five years ago.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Russian negotiators raised the stakes in talks to stop the fighting by including for discussion wider European security arrangements that have been in place since the end of the Cold War. That change, long sought by Moscow, has alarmed European leaders and placed a question mark on NATO’s future role.
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“Russia wants to talk about questions of European security architecture. We don’t need to talk about that. There is one,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, referring to NATO.
After two days of talks with Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi this week, U.S. envoys briefed Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was in Dublin, Ireland, to meet European leaders.
More talks are planned as negotiators seek a breakthrough in peace efforts, according to U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
A team of diplomats from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the European Union will be sent to the talks, said European Council President Antonio Costa after a meeting in Dublin. The session was dominated by European efforts to avoid being sidelined in the U.S.-led negotiations.
Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, said Russia had agreed to include Europe in upcoming talks, after Moscow's long insistence that the continent’s governments should be excluded because they supported Ukraine.
Europe’s presence at the table will allow negotiators “to address the broader postwar European security arrangements alongside the territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia,” Kushner said on X.
European leaders are wary of Russian maneuvering, as well as Trump’s praise for Putin and his administration’s sharp criticism of Europe.
The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said Europe must insist on a ceasefire before taking the negotiations further — the opposite of what Putin demands.
“If we start to talk about what Russia is asking regarding the security architecture, we actually walk into the traps that Russia is setting us,” she said in Dublin.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden insisted that Europe must take its fate into its own hands. “We cannot let neither the Americans nor the Russians decide about our future,” Frieden said.
Moscow is aiming “to dismantle NATO and the post-Cold War European security architecture,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment Thursday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reaffirmed that Russia is open for contacts with the Europeans.
“Once we understand (Europe’s) true intentions and their readiness to facilitate the peace process, then it will be possible to make a decision on holding a dialogue regarding a settlement in Ukraine in an expanded format,” he said.
Zelenskyy on Friday repeated his complaints about drone speed limits on the U.S. Starshield system — SpaceX’s military-grade version of the Starlink satellite internet service — that Ukraine needs for its defense.
The speed restrictions are limiting Ukrainian drones to 161 kph (100 mph) on the entire front line and in Russian-occupied territory, he said, making it impossible for Kyiv to deploy its interceptors effectively against Moscow's fast-moving jet-powered drones.
“We still have no clear explanations,” he said of the unannounced restrictions, after first raising the issue on Thursday.
Ukrainian officials are asking the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and SpaceX to clarify and resolve the situation, he said.
Last month, similar SpaceX limits on Ukrainian drone speeds severely disrupted operations, alarming officials in Kyiv who fear a drop in U.S. support.
Elon Musk acknowledged in October that his company SpaceX had throttled the Starlink internet service in Ukraine for about a week, saying the system couldn’t be used for offensive strikes against Russia.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defenses downed 1,198 Ukrainian long-range drones between late Thursday and early Friday. However, strikes on three Russian regions killed seven people, including a 12-year-old, and wounded 17, local officials said.
Ukraine’s General Staff said it hit an oil refinery in the Russian city of Volgograd, starting a fire. The refinery has a capacity of about 110 million barrels per year, it said.
The massive Ukrainian drone barrage appeared designed to show that Kyiv is holding its own in the war, countering Moscow’s insistence that a Russian victory is inevitable. Ukraine has repeatedly hit Russian refineries, claiming last month it neutralized more than half of Russia’s refining capacity.
Kyiv’s forces are using drones and ground robots to help defend against Russia’s army along the about 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line snaking down eastern and southeastern Ukraine.
With its troops largely bogged down on the battlefield, Moscow has used strategic bombardment of civilian areas to hurt Ukraine.
Russia launched 117 drones against Ukraine overnight, killing at least two people, including a 17-year-old, authorities said.
A single Russian attack Friday on southern Zaporizhzhia hit two five-story apartment blocks and wounded 30 people, including six children, officials said.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of civilians, analysts and humanitarian organizations say.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure caused widespread power outages across about half of the country's regions Friday, said First Deputy Minister of Energy Artem Nekrasov.
Moscow has battered Ukraine’s power grid each winter during the war, hoping to weaken public morale.
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AP reporters Sam McNeil in Dublin, Susie Blann in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
