The Ukraine Daily Briefing · Thursday, October 22, 2026
Prepared by Diana Bozhyk
Hours after Steve Witkoff left St. Petersburg, Russia fired 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv in three waves, one carrying a cluster warhead into the historic quarter around the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. At midday, a drone and a missile hit a crowded market in Lozova, killing two women and wounding 34. Ukrainian troops revealed they had fought 15 kilometers through a gas pipeline behind Russian lines, Finland brought Kyiv locomotives and satellites, and the Kremlin said Putin had offered Witkoff no peace plan at all.
A woman is pictured lookin at a house been damaged by a Russian attack for the third time in Dnipro. (Mykola Miakshykov/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
The Day’s Reckoning
The first wave reached Kyiv only hours after Witkoff met Putin. “All I see is broken windows on the floor, my neighbors are screaming, going out of their houses, and all they can do is just pray,” said Heorhii Rezhenko, 26, who lives in the Pechersk district. One of the missiles that night carried a cluster warhead designed to scatter 58 explosive bomblets over an area about 400 meters on each side. It fell near the monasteries of Kyiv’s old city.
That is the plot of this Thursday. One day after Putin told Trump’s envoy he was “in principle” ready for talks, his spokesman said Putin had offered no proposal of his own, and a senior Russian lawmaker said the goal was to make Ukraine “capitulate.” Ukraine’s General Staff reported the deadliest single day for Russian troops of the entire war.
And Kyiv kept welcoming friends. Finland’s prime minister arrived in the capital and was there when ballistic missiles came again in broad daylight.
Ukrainian woman Natascia is seen at her home after a Russian ballistic missile struck her garden in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Vincenzo Circosta/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Cluster Warheads Over the Lavra
You live in a private house in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district. Late on Wednesday, the windows blow in, and outside you see a neighbor’s house on fire and hear people screaming.
“Fortunately, we managed to rescue a man and his wife who were inside the burning house,” said a resident named Vladyslav. One person was killed in the district. Through the night, Russia launched Iskander-M, S-400, Zircon and Onyx missiles and 210 drones at Ukraine, 110 of them jet-powered. Zelensky said 21 ballistic missiles were aimed at Kyiv in three waves, damaging homes, energy sites, railway and metro infrastructure, shopping centers and factories. Ukraine downed 181 drones; strikes landed at 32 locations.
Three of the missiles struck the Pechersk district, the capital’s historic center, with cluster warheads that scatter over 400 meters, Zelensky said. Presidential adviser Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov said one carried a K5 warhead: “The aim was to destroy part of the old city and injure as many people as possible.” Buildings of a monastery near the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra were damaged. Eight people were injured in Pechersk, three of them children. An ambulance station was hit and six ambulances wrecked; no medics were hurt. Strikes damaged metro tracks on the Southern Bridge, where traffic toward the left bank was restricted, set a restaurant on fire in Sviatoshynskyi, and injured six in Holosiivskyi and two in Obolon, where videos suggested an Epicentr home-goods store was destroyed. DTEK imposed emergency outages in Holosiivskyi. City authorities counted one dead and 24 injured, 16 in hospital. Zelensky put the toll in Kyiv and the surrounding region at two dead and 34 wounded, including five children.
At 12:30 p.m. the ballistic missile alert sounded again, this time in daylight, while Finland’s prime minister was in the city. Zelensky said Russia has struck more than 170 energy facilities since Trump announced an energy truce on October 11.
At lunchtime in Lozova, in the Kharkiv region, the Central Market was crowded. A Shahed and a Banderol missile hit it. Two women, aged 50 and 60, were killed. The number of people hurt rose from 17 to 36; 34 were injured, some fighting for their lives, and two were treated for shock. “At an ordinary market, where everything is in plain sight, there never were and never could be any military targets,” Zelensky said. The strike damaged market pavilions, a church, nearby homes and shopping centers, and city services switched to mass-casualty mode. Around the same time, a jet-powered Shahed hit a house near Zhytomyr, wounding eight people, two of them children.
Over the past day, Russian attacks killed at least nine people and injured 56. In the Zaporizhzhia region, three people were killed and three wounded amid 862 Russian attacks. In the Kharkiv region, one person was killed and 15 injured, including three children. In the Sumy region, one died and four were hurt in nearly 60 attacks. In Chernihiv, Banderol drones struck an enterprise twice, killing one person, and a drone set fire to an agricultural warehouse in Semenivka; and in the Kherson region one person was killed and four injured. In the Donetsk region, two died in Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka; the Sloviansk community extended its mandatory evacuation of families with children to the whole community. “Unfortunately, the security situation in our community keeps getting worse,” said its head, Vadym Lyakh. Across the Donetsk region, 215 people, including 68 children, were evacuated from front-line areas in a single day, and in Novodonetske Russian strikes hit 23 apartment buildings.
Fifteen Kilometers Underground
You are a soldier of the Khartiia Corps near Kupyansk. For months, Russian troops have crawled through gas pipelines under your lines to come up behind you. Now you go into the pipe yourself.
The corps revealed Operation Veles: Ukrainian troops moved about 15 kilometers through underground gas pipelines into the Russian rear, then struck together with drones and units above ground. The pipe lies two to four meters underground and is barely more than a meter high. “The Russians intended to use the gas routes to penetrate the rear of our forces. So we went underground ourselves,” said the corps commander, Brig. Gen. Ihor Obolienskyi. The corps said more than 30 Russian soldiers were captured and more than 100 became casualties; the figures could not be verified. “When the battlefield became transparent, the war went underground,” it said. The Institute for the Study of War said the operation may let Ukraine clear Kupyansk of infiltrators for good.
The rest of the front told a similar story. Ukraine’s General Staff reported at least 2,250 Russian troops killed or seriously wounded between October 21 and 22, the highest single-day figure of the war, and drone forces commander Robert “Magyar” Brovdi said his units alone accounted for 680. Ukrainian sources linked the losses to Russian infantry crossing open fields on foot toward Dobropillia. “In some sectors, irreversible losses have reached as high as 74 percent,” Obolienskyi said.
ISW calculated that Russian forces have suffered a net loss of 241 square kilometers since September 1, and that in 2026 they have advanced on average just 0.25 square kilometers a day. It confirmed new Ukrainian advances south of Vovchansk, northeast of Kharkiv, and noted that Ukrainian and Russian positions are now intermixed in southern Kostiantynivka. Russian troops infiltrated southeast of Dobropillia, near Bilytske and Svitle. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have captured Myrivka near Hulyaipole, 16 kilometers beyond any confirmed position; even Russian military bloggers called its claim about Yulivka near Orikhiv “surprising,” with one suggesting it was meant to mislead U.S. negotiators. Near Lyman, a Ukrainian commander said heavy losses forced Russia to withdraw its elite Rubikon drone unit, and ISW has since seen drone operators of Russia’s 50th Varyag Brigade take its place. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian troops near Kupyansk had cut holes in the pipelines to launch drones from underground. In occupied Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian forces hit a Russian Buk-M1 air-defense system.
What Moscow Means by Talks
A day after the Kremlin said Putin was ready to resume three-way talks, it explained what it meant. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not presented Witkoff with any Russian peace proposal and had not even considered who would sit on a Russian delegation. Duma Defense Committee deputy chairman Alexei Zhuravlyov said Russia must “press” Zelensky on the battlefield until Ukraine “capitulates.” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov claimed Russian forces hold the “complete strategic initiative,” while investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev said the Witkoff meeting had agreed to expand Russian-American economic cooperation.
ISW concluded that the Kremlin wants economic concessions from Washington to keep funding the war, not an end to it. Bloomberg reported that Ukrainian strikes have cut deep into Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company, whose first-half profit fell nearly 20 percent; officials there fear a few more months of attacks could do lasting damage.
In Washington, Witkoff’s praise of Putin as a “humanitarian” drew fire from Trump’s own party. Senator Thom Tillis urged Witkoff to speak to Ukrainian families whose children had been killed or taken. Senator John Cornyn called Putin a killer, and Representative Don Bacon called the episode embarrassing. Trump, asked whether Putin is a humanitarian, said only that freeing Stephen Hubbard could be seen that way: “But I wouldn’t say anything one way or the other.” Hubbard’s sister said he had expected to die in prison and described beatings and starvation.
Vice President JD Vance defended Witkoff, saying thanking someone who freed an American was part of the job, and said peace remains “a tall mountain to climb.” On Starlink, he said Musk did not want to “get in the middle of what is a war between two state actors without the US government effectively directing him.” Trump said of Musk: “The bottom line, (Musk) put it back.” The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had called Musk to lift the limits. A Ukrainian official said that was “all false” and that the cap of 161 kilometers an hour remains. “There are absolutely no explanations for what’s happening,” the official said. Zelensky said he was still waiting for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s answer on restoring speeds of up to 400 kilometers an hour.
“Just Understand Us”
In an interview with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO, Zelensky spoke more openly about Trump than ever before. “I think it’s wrong and unacceptable that he pins Russia’s aggression and Russia’s killings on me,” he said. He rejected Trump’s claim that Ukraine’s refinery strikes drive up American diesel prices, pointing instead to the Strait of Hormuz. “I can tell you with 100% certainty that diesel prices do not depend on the volumes Russia sells,” he said.
“The way he speaks about me – President Trump should speak about Putin in the same way,” he said. “Sanctions are sitting on his desk. He didn’t vote for them – Congress voted for strong sanctions. He has the power to act.” Asked why Trump has not, he said: “I don’t know why. Perhaps they have a special relationship.”
He warned that giving up Sloviansk and Kramatorsk could open the way to Pavlohrad and Dnipro, and said Russia holds about 18 to 19 percent of Ukraine and still wants Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. “The biggest compromise we are already making is a ceasefire,” he said. “I have tried to tell the US President many times: just understand us. It is a huge compromise – simply holding the lines where they are right now.” He also said he did not believe before February 2022 that Russia would invade, and called his visit to liberated Bucha the hardest day of the war. “All secrets, all mysteries eventually come to light. It just takes time,” he said. “Time will be on our side.” In Oslo earlier in the week, he had put it more simply: “Of course, we are not losing this war. But we are losing people.”
Friends From the North
Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo arrived in Kyiv with seven agreements worth about €300 million. Finland will hand Ukraine’s railways 10 Dv12 diesel locomotives free of charge, the first country to donate locomotives, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said. Estonia has also said it will send locomotives. Russia has damaged or destroyed more than 500 Ukrainian locomotives since 2022, over half of them this year. “The fact that we will have more locomotives, more energy equipment, and more resources to protect our energy infrastructure will be a significant boost,” Zelensky said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) welcomes Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo during their meeting in Kyiv. (Genya Savilov / AFP via Getty Images)
Most important for the front, Finnish companies ICEYE and Nokia signed a letter of intent with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry to build Ukraine its own satellite communications system, one that foreign governments cannot switch off. “Ukraine needs secure, sovereign, and high-performance satellite communications systems that it controls,” ICEYE chief executive Rafal Modrzewski said. The countries also discussed joint drone production in Finland, Ukraine’s gas storage and mobile shelters, and Kyiv invited Finland to join its war-risk insurance fund. Finland added €2 million in humanitarian aid. Orpo visited a school damaged by a Russian drone.
The Financial Times reported that NATO will let Ukraine buy weapons, ammunition and supplies through its central procurement agency, the NSPA, a new channel separate from the U.S.-weapons program PURL, through which allies have funded more than $6 billion in American equipment. Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, Alyona Getmanchuk, called it “an important gateway into NATO’s defense industrial ecosystem.” It is unclear whether it could cover Patriots, which still need Pentagon approval. And Finland’s military said it will spend €100 million to produce about a million anti-personnel mines from 2028 for its 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, after leaving the Ottawa Convention in January.
Also Today
A cheaper cruise missile. Ukraine’s military intelligence detailed Russia’s new Filin cruise missile, in use since late summer: 3D-printed parts, a claimed range of 1,200 kilometers, a Russian engine, and 35 American and 22 Chinese electronic components.
A 3-D model of the new Russian cruise missile “Filin” from the website of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR, from. (HUR/War&Sanctions)
Fortress Alabuga. Satellite images showed 33 new air-defense positions around Russia’s main Shahed factory in Tatarstan, RFE/RL reported. Ukrainian intelligence estimates Russia now builds about 10,000 drones and decoys a month, keeps about 6,200 Gerans in reserve, and has ordered more than 100,000 this year. Russia is also expanding the nearby Alabuga-Volokno carbon-fiber plant; one expert estimated the added material could support some 28,000 Shahed airframes a year, Politico reported.
Strikes inside Russia. Ukraine said it hit the 75th Arsenal in Serpukhov, near Moscow, which repairs Buk and S-300 air-defense systems, and an electronic-warfare station in Bryansk, as well as a command post, a drone control point and a supply depot in occupied Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk. Drones damaged homes and a closed clinic in Lipetsk. Moscow’s mayor said 630 drones flew toward the region and two people were injured in Voronovskoye.
A partisan claim. The Ukrainian partisan group Atesh said on Wednesday that it disrupted military communication lines around a major Moscow data center operator to hamper Russian air defenses. The claim could not be verified.
Rosneft’s refineries. Bloomberg reported that Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery has been idle more than half the time since May, its Syzran plant has run below a third of capacity for most of six months, and Tuapse has been shut since April.
Belarus, closer still. Russia’s defense minister met his Belarusian counterpart in Minsk on joint air defense and command.
More EU sanctions. EU diplomats are reviewing 117 new listings, including 31 aimed at Russian oil refining and exports, first shown to ambassadors on Wednesday.
Coming home. Ukraine received the bodies of 252 people Russia says were Ukrainian soldiers.
Ukraine returned 252 bodies during the latest repatriation. (Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War)
Oldest prisoner. A Russian court sentenced 77-year-old Crimean activist Volodymyr Ananiev to 18 years over an alleged plot against Crimea’s Russian-installed leader. His wife called the case “trumped-up.”
Bracelet off. Ukraine’s anti-corruption court let former justice minister Herman Halushchenko, charged in the Energoatom graft case, remove his electronic monitor; prosecutors asked to seize his bail.
Spy arrest in Germany. German police arrested a Ukrainian citizen, Vadym Y., on suspicion of spying for Russian intelligence on defense production.
“Illegal-2026.” Russian police and the FSB raided homes in occupied territories in early October, targeting Ukrainians who refuse Russian passports, Ukraine’s military intelligence said.
Disinformation in the midterms. Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes said on Wednesday that Russia is running AI-driven online campaigns against U.S. candidates who support Ukraine, singling out Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.
The Closing
Tonight, a monastery in Kyiv’s old city is counting its damage, and in Lozova families are sitting beside hospital beds. A day after Russia said it was ready to talk, it sent cluster warheads into the heart of the capital. Ukraine’s soldiers went underground to win back their own land. The people of Ukraine are asking what Heorhii asked: please do something to stop it.
A Prayer for Ukraine
1. For Those Who Defend
Lord of hosts, go with the soldiers of the Khartiia Corps who crawled through darkness beneath the earth near Kupyansk, and bring them back into the light. Strengthen the defenders at Dobropillia, Vovchansk, Kostiantynivka and Lyman, and the drone crews who hold back the tide. Steady the air defenders of Kyiv who face ballistic missiles by night and by day.
2. For the Wounded and the Grieving
God of all comfort, receive the two women killed at the market in Lozova, the one lost in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district, and the dead of Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kherson regions. Heal the children wounded in Pechersk and Zhytomyr, and those still fighting for their lives in Lozova. Comfort the families waiting for news of the 252 soldiers brought home.
3. For Those Who Lead
King of kings, give President Zelensky courage to speak the truth and patience to keep seeking peace. Open the eyes of President Trump, Vice President Vance and their envoys to the difference between the one who attacks and the one who defends. Bless Prime Minister Orpo and the people of Finland for standing with Ukraine, and let every promise of help be kept.
4. For the Holy Places and the Towns
Faithful God, protect the monasteries and churches of Kyiv, the Lavra and the Holy Presentation Monastery, where prayer has risen for a thousand years. Bless the medics whose ambulances were destroyed, the rail workers who will drive the new locomotives, and the families of Sloviansk who must leave their homes so their children may live. Shelter them on the road.
5. For a People Who Keep Standing
Father, Ukraine is weary but it has not fallen. Sustain those who pray in the dark, those who rebuild by day, and those who wait in shelters for the all-clear. Grant them hope that the world will hear their plea. In Your mercy, in Your justice, in Your time — bring this war to its end, and let the ending be worthy of what Ukraine has endured.