Kyiv was hit by a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack on Saturday morning with debris of intercepted missiles falling on a shopping mall and a residential building according to a local official.

Unjammable, lethal, and accurate, fibre-optic tethered drones are revolutionizing the battlefield — and giving Moscow an advantage.

The announcement was made ahead of an expected prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia on Friday – an outcome of last week’s face-to-face talks in Turkey, the first time the two countries have held direct talks at any level in three years.

A Kremlin spokesman says Russia and Ukraine have no scheduled direct peace talks. The statement Thursday came nearly a week after their first face-to-face meeting since the early weeks of Moscow's invasion in 2022 and days after U.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt on Friday over the Vatican as a potential location for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, saying that the Holy See itself would find it uncomfortable to host two mainly Orthodox Christian nations.

This week's prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine was the largest since the war’s onset. But skepticism of a lasting truce, and President Trump’s peace-making, remains. Bridget Brink resigned as ambassador to Ukraine in April,

Russia is still refusing to sign up to an unconditional comprehensive ceasefire. It has no intention of returning any of the Ukrainian land it has seized, occupied and claims to have annexed. On the contrary: it's pushing for more.

Russia's defence ministry said 105 drones had been shot down over Russian regions between midnight and the early morning of Thursday, including 35 over the Moscow region. The previous day, Russia said it shot down well over 300 Ukrainian drones.