By asahifile 
Russia is “ready in principle” to restart talks with the United States and Ukraine on ending the war, Vladimir Putin’s top aide said on Wednesday — within hours, ballistic missiles were falling on Kyiv again.
Yuriy Ushakov spoke after Putin met Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg. Kyiv has been pressing Moscow to revive the three-way talks, which were suspended in February, and Ushakov suggested a new round could be held around 10 November.
What Moscow actually said
The signal came with conditions attached. Ushakov said ideas Witkoff brought after meeting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with the leaders of Norway and Finland, were not very “useful”. He also said the talks must focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the end of the conflict” — framing the agenda around post-war security architecture rather than the immediate terms of a ceasefire.
The Kremlin has blamed last month’s “massive” Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory for the breakdown of the earlier rounds, which followed the full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.
The same night, in Kyiv
According to the Kyiv Independent, Russian ballistic missiles struck several locations in the capital late on 21 October, injuring six people. In the Dniprovsky district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a car service station and a private house were damaged by debris, and warned there might be people trapped under rubble. In the Darnitsky district, missiles landed near a transport infrastructure facility. Residents described windows blown out and a house on fire.
It was not an isolated night. Earlier the same day, a Russian drone attack on Kyiv killed at least two people and injured two others. The strikes came after both Zelensky and Putin had made public shows of support for trilateral negotiations.
Diplomacy and escalation, running in parallel
The sequence is the story. Witkoff flew to St Petersburg after a round of meetings in Europe, including with Zelensky on Monday, and returned with a statement of willingness rather than a date. Moscow’s phrasing — “ready in principle” — leaves the timetable, the agenda and the venue open, and Ushakov’s dismissal of the European proposals gives the Kremlin room to arrive at any future round with its own priorities intact.
Meanwhile the military campaign has not paused for the diplomacy. Russia continues to intensify missile and drone attacks on a capital of about three million people, and Ukraine’s European partners are being asked how long their support can hold if the war grinds on without a negotiating track.
For Ukraine the risk in this pattern is that talks become a forum Russia enters on its own terms while pressure on the ground continues to shape what is left to negotiate over. For Washington the risk is the opposite: an opening that looks like progress but never produces a date.
There is a practical asymmetry in the room. Kyiv wants the talks restarted now; Moscow says it is ready “in principle”; Washington is shuttling between the two without a published framework of its own. That leaves the timing of any next round resting largely on the Kremlin’s convenience, and gives it an easy way to demonstrate goodwill to the White House without changing anything on the front line.
The military picture is not static either. Ukraine has been pressing allies for more air-defence interceptors as Russia targets energy infrastructure ahead of winter, and each night of strikes complicates the position Kyiv would bring to any negotiation about territory and security guarantees.
What to watch
- Whether a concrete date near 10 November is confirmed, and who attends.
- Whether the intensity of Russian strikes on Kyiv and Ukraine’s energy system rises or falls in the run-up.
- What the Kremlin puts on the table on “post-conflict security” — the phrase that will define whether talks are about a ceasefire or about Ukraine’s future alignment.
- Whether European governments convert public solidarity into another round of funding and air-defence commitments.
Sources: BBC News on the resumption of talks, and The Kyiv Independent on the strikes.