Russia and Ukraine Trade Deadly Air Strikes Amid Diplomacy

Russia and Ukraine exchanged further waves of drone and missile strikes on Saturday, September 26, 2026, with Russian attacks killing four people across Ukraine, including two women in Zaporizhzhia and two people in Sumy. Meanwhile, a long-range Ukrainian drone assault on the southern Russian region of Krasnodar left three people dead and two injured, The Hindu and The Independent reported.³¹

Strikes on both sides

Russian forces struck Kyiv overnight, damaging a data centre that supports cellphone internet services and Starlink satellite communications, Russia's Ministry of Defence said. Russian drones also hit several districts of the Ukrainian capital, injuring four people and damaging residential and office buildings, while a separate drone strike ignited a blaze at a warehouse in the Kyiv region's Boryspil district, leaving two people hurt.³¹

Ukraine's long-range drones targeted Russian oil refineries and industrial sites. Russian media reported that a local oil refinery was among the targets struck in the Krasnodar attack, which also sparked fires at two industrial facilities.³

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy listed strikes on residential homes in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Sumy and Kharkiv regions. In Zaporizhzhia, two women were killed when they could not be freed from the debris of their collapsed house. Separately, three people died in attacks on the area of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region that is under Russian occupation.³¹

Accounts of the overall toll varied by outlet. France 24 reported at least 16 people killed over 24 hours of strikes, while The Independent reported that Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky had ramped up air attacks that killed 10 people across Ukraine and Russia.⁴³¹

Overnight strikes inside Russia

A night earlier, on September 25, Ukraine launched another round of drone strikes across Russia, killing at least two people, according to regional authorities cited by The Moscow Times. Drones struck an industrial facility in the Perm region, killing a man; Perm region Governor Dmitry Makhonin said emergency crews were clearing the site and that air monitoring showed no threat to nearby residents. A man in the Belgorod region also died when a drone struck the car he was driving.²

Strikes on the Ulyanovsk region injured at least eight people and damaged industrial and civilian sites, prompting the cancellation of classes at schools and colleges. Drone strikes also damaged the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in the Rostov region, which suspended operations. Russia's Defense Ministry reported shooting down 592 Ukrainian drones nationwide, including over annexed Crimea, during the overnight period.²

According to Ukrainian officials, a Russian overnight assault on Kyiv on September 25 left a 14-year-old boy dead and at least nine others hurt. The Moscow Times, which published the report, noted that Russia's Prosecutor General's Office had designated the outlet an undesirable organisation.²

Diplomacy at the United Nations

The overnight strikes followed a week that had been marked by intensive top-level diplomatic engagement at the UN General Assembly in New York. Zelensky said Russia was escalating and called for stronger world responses, warning that Vladimir Putin was looking for pretexts to continue the war. He said, "Obviously, the Russians are not preparing to stop their war, at least for now," adding that 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…" and that "he is looking for excuses to keep waging the war."¹

Zelensky said diplomatic activity would continue: "In the coming days and throughout October, there will be a lot of diplomatic activity to change the situation." He had earlier appealed to the UN for countries to cut Russia's revenue through sanctions and trade bans, and The Independent reported calls for mechanisms such as the Lindsey Graham Act to be strengthened. The Hindu noted that, despite years of diplomatic efforts, nothing yet pointed to an imminent end to the conflict.¹³

Donald Trump told Zelensky at the UN General Assembly to reach a deal with Putin, saying he wanted the two leaders to settle their dispute with each other.¹

Germany and Russia talk again

Russia and Germany's foreign ministers met for the first time since before the 2022 invasion, meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly. Moscow-Berlin relations have remained frozen since the invasion began, and tensions grew further after a drone episode at Leipzig/Halle Airport in August. During the meeting, the two sides addressed bilateral relations and the war in Ukraine, with Germany's Johann Wadephul pressing Sergey Lavrov to make every effort toward securing a Black Sea grain export agreement.¹

Lavrov rejected German calls to ease off what he characterised as a dangerous path toward Germany, accusing Berlin of being Ukraine's main sponsor and of seeking to become a leading military power in Europe. He asked, "Does Berlin understand what this could lead to?" and "Didn't they not learn the lessons of World War II?"¹

Ukraine's 'Army of Robots'

Mykhailo Fedorov announced the launch of an Army of Robots initiative intended to replace humans on the battlefield. He said Ukraine launched the Army of Drones in 2022, and that drones now account for over 95 per cent of battlefield strikes, with Ukraine home to more than 700 UAV manufacturers, adding that the next step needed was the robotisation of warfare, aimed simply at saving lives.¹