Russian strikes hit Odesa port, kill rail worker

Russian drones struck Ukraine’s main Black Sea port in Odesa and a railway site in the Zaporizhzhia region overnight, killing an assistant train driver and injuring the main driver, according to Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba.

Kuleba said on X on Wednesday that the attack damaged berths, warehouses, railway infrastructure, and port operators’ facilities in Odesa. He said the strike on a sorting yard at Zaporizhzhia-Live station killed the assistant driver. “Another proof of terrorism, Russia is at war against peaceful people, against those who were simply doing their job and keeping the country moving,” Kuleba said.

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko said Russia also launched drones and missiles on a flight path near the disused Chornobyl nuclear plant and the Khmelnytskyi plant, raising the risk of an accident ahead of Sunday’s 40th anniversary of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster.

Kravchenko said 35 Kinzhal missiles were detected at various distances within about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, of the Chornobyl facility or the Khmelnytskyi plant. He said 18 passed within about 20 kilometers of both sites on the same flight.

He added that the Russian military was likely using Chornobyl as an attack route for drones to bypass areas of dense Ukrainian air defense coverage.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack killed two people in the city of Syzran, including a woman and a child, Samara region Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorischev said on social media.

Ukraine is seeking face-to-face talks between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, as Kyiv looks to revive U.S.-led efforts to end Russia’s invasion.

Sybiha said Ukraine had asked Turkey to help facilitate top-level talks and had contacted other capitals as possible hosts. Ukraine would consider any venue outside Russia and Belarus, he said.

“We are … advocating for a (summit) meeting now to bring new momentum to diplomacy,” Sybiha told reporters Tuesday. His remarks were embargoed until Wednesday.

U.S.-mediated talks over the past year have made no meaningful progress and now seem to be on hold as the U.S. focuses on the war in Iran.

Zelenskyy has accepted an unconditional ceasefire called for by President Donald Trump, but Putin has refused. Analysts say Putin believes time favors Russia, expecting Western military and financial support for Ukraine to weaken.

Fighting continued along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (800-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine. Western officials and analysts say Russia is suffering several tens of thousands of battlefield casualties each month. Battlefield casualty figures and which side holds the advantage could not be independently verified.

Ukraine has expanded its domestic arms industry, producing long-range drones and missiles capable of striking inside Russia, including oil facilities and plants that supply the Russian military.

In Syzran, in Russia’s Samara region, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Ukraine’s border, a drone strike caused part of a residential building to collapse, local authorities said.

The bodies of a woman and a child were recovered from the rubble, and 12 other people were injured, officials said. Images from the scene showed emergency workers atop a large pile of debris from part of a four-story building.

Russian media said a Rosneft oil refinery, a frequent target of Ukrainian drone attacks, is on the same street as the damaged building.

Ukraine’s aerial attacks on Russia rose from 6,200 in 2024 to more than 23,000 in 2025, Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said last month.