The long-range Russian drones come in swarms each night, buzzing over Ukraine by the hundreds, terrorizing the population and attacking targets from the industrial east to areas near its western border with Poland.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiating teams will again meet in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed, for the first such meeting since President Donald Trump set a 50-day deadline for a ceasefire to be reached.

New waves of deadly Russian missiles pounded Ukraine overnight Sunday while long range drone attacks by Kyiv sparked travel chaos at Moscow’s airports.

The next round of negotiations between Ukraine and Russia will take place in Istanbul on Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. This was reported to him by Ukraine's chief negotiator,

Ukraine said it would send a high-level negotiating team to Turkey peace talks with Russia, even as Moscow wrote off the talks before they had started.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces downed at least 143 Ukrainian drones from Wednesday into Thursday, with at least three craft intercepted over Moscow region.

Russia now controls more than two-thirds of Ukraine’s Donetsk region — the main theater of the ground war. Russian forces have carved out a 10-mile-deep pocket around the Ukrainian troops defending the crucial city of Kostiantynivka, partly surrounding them from the east, south and west.

It is a pivotal moment in Ukraine as Kyiv announced it will hold another round of peace talks with Russia on Wednesday. It's the first such meeting in seven weeks and comes as NATO leaders try to answer Ukraine’s desperate call for more weapons after Moscow launched one of its largest-ever aerial assaults.