Ukraine launches nearly 1,200 drones at Russia as US-led talks will consider wider European security

KYIV, Ukraine — 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. Ukraine launches nearly 1,200 drones at Russia as US-led talks will consider wider European securityMeanwhile, 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.

“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 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 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.