Zelenskyy warns of grim winter as Russia kills 4 near Kyiv
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- Zelenskyy made his first official visit to Belgrade since becoming president in 2019, meeting Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and renewing calls for tougher sanctions to block missile parts flowing to Russia "from almost every continent."
- Russian strikes hit the Kyiv region overnight, killing four including a three-year-old boy; the child's parents, 15-year-old brother, and a neighbor were wounded in a "double-tap" follow-up strike, Zelenskyy said.
- Ukraine is left with "virtually no intact thermal power plants" as it braces for the heating season, with those facilities serving as important complements to the nuclear energy feeding the grid.
- Vucic said no military cooperation was discussed and Serbia's policy was unchanged; Serbia remains one of the only European nations not to sanction Russia, though it continues supplying non-military aid to Ukraine.
- Russia has significantly escalated long-range ballistic missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in recent months, while Kyiv retaliates with record numbers of drones, with 13 killed across Ukraine in the last 24 hours.
- Serbia maintains support for Ukraine's territorial integrity, Vucic stressed, while the Kremlin has accused Serbian firms of selling munitions to Ukraine — a claim Vucic has repeatedly denied.
Why it matters: With Ukraine's thermal power capacity effectively destroyed before winter, millions of civilians face heating-season vulnerability as Russia systematically targets the energy grid. Zelenskyy's Belgrade outreach — to a government that still refuses to sanction Moscow — underscores how far short of a united European front Ukraine's allies remain heading into the cold months.
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