Abu Dhabi Talks Set for November, but 21 Missiles Just Hit Kyiv

Russia struck Kyiv with at least 21 ballistic missiles in three waves on October 22, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said three of them carried cluster munitions. Kyiv authorities reported two people killed and more than 30 wounded, with metro infrastructure damaged at the Pivdenny Bridge. The strikes hit a dozen Ukrainian regions, including residential houses, energy sites, shops, cafes and a monastery in Kyiv.

Elsewhere, two women aged 50 and 60 were killed at a market in Lozova, and one man was killed in Sumy. Russia's mayor of Moscow said 630 drones were launched toward the Moscow region overnight, and two people were wounded there. The two sides also exchanged war dead: Moscow handed over 252 bodies, Ukraine 25.

The attacks landed one day after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg on October 21. President Donald Trump called that meeting "the closest we've been" to ending the war, and the Kremlin said it was "in principle" open to resuming trilateral talks. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov then said talks are planned for the first half of November in Abu Dhabi in a trilateral format.

That is the paradox. Battlefield escalation and negotiation momentum are running on separate tracks, not one driving the other.

The strikes do not prove the talks have collapsed. The talks are still scheduled. But they show that any ceasefire or freeze proposal will be tested against continued escalation, and that winter strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure may shape the leverage on both sides.

Several questions remain open. Whether the early-November Abu Dhabi talks proceed, and who attends.

For now, the record shows two tracks running at once: a diplomatic calendar taking shape, and missiles still falling on the cities that calendar is meant to protect.