Russia and Ukraine exchanged heavy airstrikes overnight into Thursday, the Associated Press reported from Kyiv, as talks resumed in Brussels on Ukraine's postwar reconstruction and the security guarantees that would follow an end to the fighting.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

Second day of talks at NATO headquarters

Ukraine's lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said the talks would continue for a second day at NATO headquarters in Brussels, focused on postwar reconstruction, funding for 2027 and security guarantees backed by Ukraine's Western allies. Officials from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the European Union and NATO were taking part, Umerov said, alongside the World Bank and the US investment group BlackRock.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

"We separately discussed the threats from Russia to Ukraine and all of Europe, as well as joint steps to counter them," Umerov wrote in an online post. NATO spokesperson Allison Hart said the representatives would meet again "to discuss the way forward on bringing about a just and sustainable end to the war in Ukraine." A separate report on the Brussels meetings described Thursday's session, at the NATO Secretary General's residence, as a second preparatory meeting ahead of US-mediated peace talks, centred on what security guarantees Washington and other partners could offer Ukraine.

Source: Rapporteur

The Brussels meetings come days before negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States are due to meet in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, for talks aimed at ending the war. Late on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had held a 90-minute conversation with US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. "The negotiations must move forward at full throttle to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible," Zelenskyy posted on X. "Ukraine is ready to take the necessary steps." Kushner posted that the talks focus not only on ending the war, "but on the broader security architecture needed to ensure that when the fighting stops, it never starts again."

The overnight exchanges — each side's claims, attributed

Ukraine's air defences shot down or suppressed 105 of 128 Russian attack drones overnight and into early Thursday, Ukrainian officials said, while Russian strikes wounded four people in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions. Russian drones struck six areas in the Dnipropetrovsk region, wounding three people in the city of Dnipro and damaging infrastructure, homes and garages, regional administrator Oleksandr Hanzha said. West of Kyiv, an attack on logistics infrastructure caused a fire and wounded a man, the State Emergency Service said.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces shot down 496 Ukrainian drones over 13 Russian regions overnight, as well as over the annexed Crimean Peninsula and the Black and Azov Seas. More than 200 Ukrainian drones targeted the Ryazan region southeast of Moscow, wounding one person, local governor Pavel Malkov said; falling debris damaged power lines and sparked a fire at an industrial site, and Russian media later reported a blaze at the Ryazan oil refinery. A warehouse of the Russian retail company Wildberries was also reported damaged; the company had not commented.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

In Ukraine's Russian-occupied Luhansk region, a Ukrainian attack killed five people and wounded 13 others on Thursday, Kremlin-installed officials said. The strike hit a bus travelling between the regional capital, Luhansk, and a nearby town, said Leonid Pasechnik, the region's Moscow-backed leader; two teenagers were among the wounded, he said.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

Search continues at Komyshuvakha, where Monday's strike killed 43

Rescue teams continued searching for more than 30 people believed trapped in the wreckage of a former school and a nearby shelter hit by Russian guided bombs on Monday in Komyshuvakha, near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, in an attack that struck as residents waited for humanitarian aid. Zelenskyy said 43 people have been confirmed killed, that efforts to identify some victims using DNA samples from relatives were continuing, and that one person reported missing had been found alive.

Source: Associated Press via EuropeSays

In excerpts of an interview with German broadcaster ZDF, to be aired in full on Friday, Zelenskyy expressed hope that the Democratic Party's win in the US midterm elections could usher in a new era of support for Ukraine, while stressing his gratitude to both American parties. What happens next turns on Abu Dhabi: whether the Russia-Ukraine-US meeting produces a framework that the Brussels reconstruction and security-guarantee work can attach to — or whether, as on Thursday, the talking and the bombing simply continue side by side.