As the world watched with growing concern, Russia unleashed a massive wave of drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on November 24 and 25, 2025, killing at least seven people and injuring more than 20, according to multiple reports from Reuters, CBC, and Ukrainian officials. The attacks, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described as the second major assault on the capital that month, targeted the country’s vital energy infrastructure and residential areas, plunging thousands into darkness and cold as winter approached.
President Zelensky, in a message posted on Telegram and reported by Reuters, revealed the scale of the offensive: “Russian forces launched more than 460 drones and 22 missiles.” The Ukrainian air force managed to shoot down most of the drones and about half of the missiles, but the damage was already done. “The primary targets were the energy sector and everything that keeps normal life going,” Zelensky said, echoing the deep disruption felt by millions of Ukrainians.
In Kyiv, the aftermath was stark. Tymur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, detailed the destruction: damage was recorded at 13 sites across the city, affecting both residential and commercial buildings as well as critical infrastructure. “The Russians are deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure and housing. Cynical terror,” Tkachenko wrote on Telegram, as cited by Reuters and CBC. City authorities were forced to restrict heating in several districts, though unseasonably warm weather—temperatures hovered around 8 degrees Celsius—provided some relief. Still, the attacks left more than 102,000 people across five regions without electricity, according to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry.
But Kyiv was not the only city under siege. In the Black Sea port of Odesa, port and energy infrastructure suffered significant damage, injuring six people, Ukrainian officials reported. Meanwhile, in the southern city of Kherson, a Russian drone strike on a private house in the Korabelnyi District left a 63-year-old man hospitalized with concussion, blast injuries, and a closed head wound, according to the Kherson Regional Military Administration. The Central and Korabelnyi districts were left partially without power due to damage to the power networks. Experts began immediate repairs as the security situation allowed, and restoration work continued under challenging conditions.
As the air raid sirens wailed, the international dimension of the conflict became dramatically evident. Four Russian drones reportedly crossed into Moldovan territory and the airspace of NATO member Romania. In response, Romanian and German NATO fighter jets scrambled near the border with Ukraine to intercept the drones. Romanian Defense Minister Ionut Mosteanu explained that the pilots came close to shooting down a drone but held off to avoid collateral damage on the ground. This marked the 13th time since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022 that Romania reported a breach of its airspace, highlighting the persistent threat to neighboring countries and the risk of escalation beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Despite the devastation, diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year-old war appeared to gain some traction. According to CBC and Reuters, Ukrainian, European, and U.S. officials held several rounds of talks in recent days, with Ukraine signaling support for a U.S.-backed peace agreement framework—though sensitive issues remained unresolved. Notably, U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who joined the American negotiating team less than two weeks prior, met with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi for several hours on November 25. “Late Monday and throughout Tuesday, Secretary Driscoll and team have been in discussions with the Russian delegation to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. The talks are going well and we remain optimistic,” said U.S. Army Lt.-Col. Jeff Tolbert, as reported by CBC.
The exact nature of the discussions was not immediately clear, and the composition of the Russian delegation remained undisclosed. Confusion also lingered over the weekend, reflecting the zigzagging nature of U.S. policy toward the war. A 28-point peace plan that emerged recently caught many in Kyiv, Europe, and the U.S. Congress off-guard, raising concerns that the Trump administration might push Ukraine toward a deal seen as overly favorable to Moscow. French President Emmanuel Macron weighed in, telling broadcaster RTL that the peace plan “goes in the right direction” but warning that any agreement must not enable Russia to resume hostilities in the future. “We want peace but we don’t want a peace that is, in fact, a capitulation,” Macron said. “That is to say, it puts Ukraine in an impossible position, that in the end gives Russia the freedom to keep going, to go further.”
The initial U.S. plan reportedly ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine, capped its army at 600,000, proposed handing the rest of Donbas to Russia as a demilitarized zone, and required Kyiv to hold elections within 100 days. Many of these provisions have since been amended or set aside, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that Moscow was still awaiting an updated proposal. Lavrov warned that if the revised plan did not reflect what President Vladimir Putin and former President Donald Trump had discussed in Alaska in August, Russia would reconsider its stance.
On the ground, the human toll was devastating. In Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi and Sviatoshynyi districts, seven people lost their lives and about 20 others were injured. Video footage posted to Telegram, cited by CBC, showed a large fire engulfing a nine-storey apartment building in the Dniprovskyi district. Liubov Petrivna, a 90-year-old resident, described the terror: “Absolutely everything” in her apartment was shattered by the strike and “glass rained down” on her. She expressed deep skepticism about the ongoing peace talks, saying, “No one will ever do anything about it. Putin won’t stop until he finishes us off.”
The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, claimed that its strikes targeted military-industrial facilities and energy assets, not civilians. Moscow has consistently denied intentionally targeting civilians, despite the mounting death toll since the invasion began in 2022. It argues that civilian infrastructure, such as energy systems, are legitimate targets intended to weaken Ukraine’s capacity to fight.
The violence was not confined to Ukraine. In Russia’s southern Rostov region, a Ukrainian drone attack killed three people and wounded eight in the city of Taganrog, according to local governor Yuri Slyusar. The attack damaged private homes, multi-storey residential blocks, and various social facilities. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its air defenses destroyed 249 Ukrainian drones overnight above several Russian regions and occupied Crimea, with 116 shot down over the Black Sea.
As restoration efforts continued in places like Kherson, where specialists raced to restore power and repair damaged infrastructure, the wider world was left to grapple with the uncertainty of what comes next. The flurry of diplomatic activity offered a glimmer of hope, but as the battered residents of Kyiv and Kherson could attest, peace remained painfully elusive.
