496 Drones Over Russia, 128 Over Ukraine — And In Brussels, Talk Of Rebuilding

The war ran at full speed on Thursday, and so did the diplomacy meant to end it. Overnight, Ukraine said its air defences shot down or suppressed 105 of 128 Russian attack drones; Russia said its forces destroyed 496 Ukrainian drones over 13 Russian regions and the Crimea and Black and Azov seas — figures each side reported of the other’s attacks, neither independently verified. In Brussels, meanwhile, officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, NATO, the World Bank and the investment firm BlackRock met Ukrainian negotiators for a second day on postwar reconstruction, funding for 2027 and the security guarantees that would underwrite any settlement.

The night’s damage, as Ukrainian officials reported it, was concentrated in the Dnipropetrovsk region, where drones struck six areas, wounded three people in Dnipro and damaged infrastructure, homes and garages, according to the regional administrator, Oleksandr Hanzha; west of Kyiv, a strike on logistics infrastructure started a fire and wounded one man, and destroyed a warehouse at Sofiivska Borshchahivka, the state emergency service said. On the Russian side, the heaviest weight fell on the Ryazan region, where the governor, Pavel Malkov, said more than 200 drones were aimed, one person was wounded and debris damaged power lines and set an industrial site ablaze; Russian media reported a fire at the Ryazan oil refinery, which the company had not commented on. In the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, the Kremlin-installed leader Leonid Pasechnik said a Ukrainian strike on a bus travelling between Luhansk city and a nearby town killed five people and wounded 13, including two teenagers — a claim reported by the occupation authorities and not independently verified. And the toll from Monday’s Russian guided-bomb strike on Komyshuvakha, in the Zaporizhzhia region, where a former school and shelter were hit as residents waited for humanitarian aid, rose to 43 confirmed dead, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, with rescue teams still searching for more than 30 people believed trapped.

The Brussels meeting, at NATO headquarters, was described by Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, as covering reconstruction, funding for 2027 and Western-backed security guarantees. “We separately discussed the threats from Russia to Ukraine and all of Europe, as well as joint steps to counter them,” Umerov wrote. A NATO spokesperson, Allison Hart, said the representatives would meet again “to discuss the way forward on bringing about a just and sustainable end to the war in Ukraine.” Money moved the same day: the European Commission sent Ukraine €4.36 billion ($4.9 billion) on Thursday, part of a €90 billion ($101 billion) loan agreed by EU leaders in April. On Wednesday evening Zelenskyy held a 90-minute call with the American negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “The negotiations must move forward at full throttle to bring this war to an end as quickly as possible,” Zelenskyy wrote afterward. “Ukraine is ready to take the necessary steps. Our proposals are clear, and we have given them to the American side.” Kushner wrote that the talks concern not only “ending this terrible war, but on the broader security architecture needed to ensure that when the fighting stops, it never starts again.” Negotiators from Russia, Ukraine and the United States are expected to meet next in Abu Dhabi in the coming days.

Zelenskyy also addressed the American midterm results directly, in excerpts of an interview with Germany’s ZDF: “We have support from two parties — support from both parties. I am also grateful to the Republicans… [Democrats] speak of renewing the ties between the U.S. and Europe, which have been somewhat lost in recent years. And that is very important to us.” The Democratic takeover of Congress changes the arithmetic of future Ukraine funding in Washington, but on Thursday the war itself had not slowed for any of it: two claimed drone counts in the hundreds, a death toll still rising from Monday’s strike, and a reconstruction conference planning, in detail, for a country that is still being bombed nightly.

Sources: Associated Press reporting, November 5, 2026, including statements of Ukrainian and Russian officials, Rustem Umerov, NATO and President Zelenskyy.