Zelensky: 'Everyone was insisting that I must leave Kyiv.'

The capital has been under near-continuous Russian attack for a second consecutive day. During the night and morning of Sept. 26 alone, air raid alerts were issued five times, some lasting several hours.

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces said the strike on the oil refinery, located approximately 400 kilometers (250 miles) from where the Ukrainian drones were launched, was carried out by the 1st Separate Center of the Unmanned Systems Forces and the 414th Separate Brigade, known as "Madyar's Birds," along with other Ukrainian military units.

Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight on Sept. 26 with 173 Shahed-type drones, 50 of which were jet-powered, the Air Force said.

The number includes 1,710 casualties that Russian forces suffered over the past day.

The invitation was announced on Sept. 23, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Putin had been invited to the summit as part of an effort to give him opportunities to engage with Trump and other world leaders.

The joint September mission follows a serious encounter on June 12, when Sweden was forced to scramble its Gripen jets twice in a single day to intercept Russian Su-24 Fencer and Su-34 Fullback strike aircraft operating aggressively close to Swedish airspace.

Ukrainian officials said Trump and Zelensky discussed the possibility of trilateral talks involving the United States, Ukraine, and Russia.

Putin said Russia had been prepared to return to talks after the Sept. 18-20 State Duma election, but claimed the attacks had changed Moscow’s calculus.

Twenty-five people, including two children, were hospitalized, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

British companies are now invited to turn in proposals on how they envision using the "goldmine of battlefield data," the U.K. Defense Ministry said, adding that the selection would be made "in just a matter of weeks."

The Kyiv Independent’s Tania Myronyshena examines why Russia’s manpower advantage is under pressure, what a new mobilization campaign could look like, whether Russians could resist it, and how hundreds of thousands of additional troops could affect the war.

The Kyiv Independent will host a live storytelling event in London on Oct. 2, bringing together its journalists and readers for an evening of firsthand accounts of reporting, working, and living through Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.