Russia will send senior diplomats and military officials to U.S.-mediated peace talks with Ukraine in Abu Dhabi on Nov. 10–11, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Nov. 7, according to Reuters.
The Russian delegation will be led by presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky and will include Deputy Foreign Ministers Sergei Ryabkov and Mikhail Galuzin, military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov, and senior General Staff officer Yury Zhigarlovsky.
Ryabkov, who oversees Russia's relations with the United States and arms control issues, will join the negotiations for the first time, while Medinsky, Galuzin, and Kostyukov have participated in previous rounds.
The expanded delegation could signal Moscow's willingness to engage in more substantive discussions covering political and military issues, Bloomberg reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed preparations for the talks with members of his Security Council on Nov. 6, with the officials selected for the delegation attending the meeting.
Ukraine's delegation will be led by Rustem Umerov, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, as David Arakhamia, head of President Volodymyr Zelensky's parliamentary faction, confirmed to the Kyiv Independent on Nov. 6.
The delegation will also include Zelensky's chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov and Arakhamia.
The upcoming meeting will mark the first round of trilateral U.S.-mediated negotiations between Ukraine and Russia since February.
The renewed diplomatic efforts come amid continued Russian missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure, as Washington pushes for a negotiated end to Russia's full-scale invasion.
Special Correspondent
Olena Goncharova is the Special Correspondent for the Kyiv Independent, where she has previously worked as a development manager and Canadian correspondent. She first joined the Kyiv Post, Ukraine's oldest English-language newspaper, as a staff writer in January 2012 and became the newspaper’s Canadian correspondent in June 2018. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta. Olena has a master’s degree in publishing and editing from the Institute of Journalism in Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. Olena was a 2016 Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellow who worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for six months. The program is administered by the University of Missouri School of Journalism in Columbia.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees Russia's relations with the United States and arms control issues, will join the negotiations for the first time.
Separately, the IIHF said it "continues to disagree" with an Oct. 30 ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that overturned its exclusion of Russian teams from international competitions.
The groups said they obtained the records from Rosstat's internal Demography database, containing information from death certificates registered between February 2022 and August 2026.
Boris Pistorius called on other countries to increase their contributions to Ukraine's air defenses, adding that the issue would be discussed at the next Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in mid-November.
Zelensky argued that the main obstacle to a ceasefire was Russian President Vladimir Putin's political will rather than technical difficulties.
Among the five injured in the city of Kyiv is a 14-year-old girl, and two people have been hospitalized, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her full solidarity with Tajani and linked the attack to pro-Russian hackers, Italian media LaPresse reported on Nov. 7.
The Iskander-M is one of Russia's principal ballistic weapons. Since the beginning of 2026, Moscow has launched more than 500 ballistic missiles against Ukraine.
Four Russian Su-34 fighter-bombers were involved in the operation, according to Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR).
The strike was the deadliest Russian attack on Zaporizhzhia Oblast since the start of the full-scale invasion.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Nov. 7 that substations were damaged in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Kharkiv, and Dnipro oblasts.
Ukraine struck various sites in the Russian regions of Oryol, Saratov, and Rostov, hitting an oil refinery among several targets overnight on Nov. 7, monitoring channels reported.
The number includes 2,280 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.
"In hindsight, it was a mistake for SpaceX to send (Ukraine) thousands of free Starlink dishes and millions of dollars a month in free service at the beginning of the war," the post reads.
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