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Overnight on Oct. 8 to Oct. 9, Russia launched 136 drones towards Ukraine, according to data provided by the Ukrainian Air Force. Of those, 93 were jet-powered Shahed drones, as well as Gerbera and Parodiya drones used as decoys. According to Kyiv, its air defenses shot down or suppressed 114 drones, with hits registered at eight locations across the country. Those figures come from the Ukrainian military and several Ukrainian information outlets and have not been independently verified. In view of the attack, Poland put its aircraft in the air and placed its surface-to-air defenses on alert, RBC-Ukraine reports.
Of the 8 locations hit, the deadliest was Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces struck the city six times at different times, starting around 5:15 a.m. Kyiv time. According to the report by the Kyiv Post, one of the strikes hit a residential area near an extracurricular education facility and killed one man and injured at least five people including a child. Later the number of injured was reported to be seven. Ukraine also says Russia dropped guided aerial bombs on the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
The death toll and the number of injured in the recent attacks by Russia continue to grow. In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelensky said 78 people were killed and 215 injured, a count that includes the Pryluky apartment building, where Ukrainian officials say 22 people died, five of them children, and the two passenger buses hit in Kramatorsk, where at least 33 were reported killed. Kyiv reported near-total darkness in parts of the capital on Oct. 8, with hourly power cuts spreading to other parts of the country as the first frosts of winter set in. Meanwhile, pressure is being put on men at home to join the fight. As France 24 reported this week, Ukrainians refer to the pressure being put on them to join up as "busification" and there are reports of men being grabbed off the street by recruitment officers.
As for Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky, there is no sign of him readying for negotiations either. Earlier, on October 8, he disagreed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio's statement that diplomacy was at a stalemate, saying: "We are not at a diplomatic dead end." Time and again, the Ukrainian head of state has been repeating that he will not surrender any territory. In addition to calling for more and tougher sanctions against Russia, he urged the U.S. to greenlight Starlink access over Russian territory. This was said by the Ukrainian president in Kyiv, sitting next to the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, days earlier: "There is only one -- not helping. What is the alternative? Not helping." Moscow has its own maximalist demands and has rejected piecemeal ceasefires, so neither capital is rushing toward a settlement.
The stalemate is being felt by the population of Ukraine. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants the fighting to stop. And with each passing month of failed negotiations more Ukrainian civilians are killed, more homes are left to freeze in darkness, and more young men are sent off to fight in a war that Kyiv's leadership has no plan to end at the table.
