A Russian drone attack kills 7 in Ukraine ahead of ceasefire talks

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched a barrage of drones across Ukraine overnight Sunday that killed at least seven people, according to local Ukrainian officials and emergency services.

The attacks, including on the capital, Kyiv, came ahead of ceasefire negotiations in Saudi Arabia in which Ukraine and Russia are expected to hold indirect U.S.-mediated talks on Monday to discuss a pause in long-range attacks targeting energy facilities and civilian infrastructure.

The Ukrainian delegation is expected to meet with U.S. officials in Saudi Arabia a day ahead of the indirect talks, Ukraine's President Voldoymyr Zelenskyy said. Ukraine is planning to send technical teams to discuss the details of the partial ceasefire.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said he expected “some real progress” at the talks in Saudi Arabia, “particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries, and from that you’ll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire.”

Asked about concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin may be looking beyond Ukraine and could press further into Europe, even if Russia is awarded territory within Ukraine now, Witkoff said he has been asked his opinion on what Putin’s motives are on a large scale.

“I simply have said that I just don’t see that he wants to take all of Europe. This is a much different situation than it was in World War II. In World War II there was no NATO. You have countries that are armed there. I take him at his word in this sense. And I think the Europeans are beginning to come to that belief, too. But it sort of doesn’t matter. That’s an academic issue. … The agenda is stop the killing, stop the carnage, let’s end this thing.”

Asked whether he was convinced that Putin wanted peace, Witkoff said: “I feel that he wants peace.”

Russia launched 147 drones across Ukraine overnight, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 97, and 25 others didn't reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures. The attacks struck the Kharkiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Odesa and Donetsk regions, as well as the capital, Kyiv.

Three people, including a 5-year-old child, were killed and 10 others were injured in a drone attack on Kyiv, the city’s military administration said. Extended sounds of explosions were heard across the Ukrainian capital in the early hours as the air raid blared for over five hours. Russian drones and debris from shot-down drones, which were flying at lower altitudes to evade air defenses, fell on residential buildings.

Residents in Kyiv surveyed the damage done to their homes and neighborhoods on Sunday morning. Many were disparaging of the upcoming ceasefire talks, pointing to the burned out properties destroyed in the drone attack, saying these were more indicative of Russia’s true intentions.

In an old multistory building on Kyiv’s left bank that was damaged in the overnight attack, Dmytro Zapadnya, 37, said he had no faith in Russia upholding any ceasefire agreement.

“There is no point in signing anything (with Russians), because it will not be worth the cost of paper where you put this signature. Well, the only thing that is not very pleasant is that now the United States seems to have little understanding of our situation,” he said.

Elsewhere, four people were killed in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Donetsk region, regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said, including three who died in a strike on the frontline town of Dobropillya.

In a statement on social media, Zelenskyy said attacks such as the one in Kyiv were a daily occurrence for Ukraine.

“This week alone, more than 1,580 guided aerial bombs, almost 1,100 strike drones and 15 missiles of various types were used against our people,” he said. “New solutions are needed, with new pressure on Moscow to stop both these strikes and this war.”

Also on Sunday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it had shot down 59 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 29 over the region of Rostov and 20 more over southwestern Astrakhan. In Rostov, one person was killed and a car caught fire due to the Ukrainian drone attack, according to the area’s temporary governor, Yuri Slyusar.

A woman also died in the Russian border village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya in the Belgorod region when a Ukrainian drone hit a car in which she was traveling.

The driver, the woman’s daughter, was also seriously injured in the attack, said local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.

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Associated Press journalist Bela Szandelszky contributed to this report.

A resident cleans up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after Russia's night drone attack, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Residents clean up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after Russia's night drone attack, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Residents clean up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after Russia's night drone attack, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A resident watches as his neighbour cleans up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after a Russian night drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A resident watches as his neighbour cleans up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after a Russia's night drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

A resident cleans up the damaged apartment in a multi-storey house after a Russia's night drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire after a drone hit an apartment in a multi-storey building during Russia's drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out the fire following a Russian attack in near Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 23, 2025. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)

LONDON (AP) — A magazine journalist's account of being added to a group chat of U.S. national security officials coordinating plans for airstrikes has raised questions about how highly sensitive information is supposed to be handled.

Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg detailed a discussion that happened over the Signal messaging app hours before strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The National Security Council has since said the text chain “appears to be authentic" and that it is looking into how a journalist’s number was added to the chain.

Here's a look at the app in question.

It's an app that can be used for direct messaging and group chats as well as phone and video calls.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption for its messaging and calling services that prevents any third-party from viewing conversation content or listening in on calls.

In other words, messages and calls sent on Signal are scrambled and only the sender and recipient at each end will have the key to decipher them.

Signal's encryption protocol is open source, meaning that it's freely available for anyone to inspect, use or modify. The encryption protocol is also used by another popular chat service, social media company Meta's WhatsApp platform.

Encryption on Signal is turned on by default, unlike another popular messaging app, Telegram, which requires users to turn it on and does not make it available for group chats.

Signal has features that are found on other messaging apps. It allows users to host group chats with up to 1,000 people and messages can be set to automatically disappear after a certain time.

Signal touts the privacy of its service — and experts agree it is more secure than conventional texting.

But it could be hacked.

Government officials have used Signal for organizational correspondence, such as scheduling sensitive meetings, but in the Biden administration, people who had permission to download it on their White House-issued phones were instructed to use the app sparingly, according to a former national security official who served in the administration.

The official, who requested anonymity to speak about methods used to share sensitive information, said Signal was most commonly used to notify someone that they should check for a classified message sent through other means.

Beyond concerns about security, Signal and other similar apps may allow users to skirt open records laws. Without special archiving software, the messages frequently aren’t returned under public information requests.

In the Atlantic article, Goldberg wrote that some messages were set to disappear after one week and some after four.

Encrypted messaging apps are increasingly popular with government officials, according to a recent Associated Press review.

State, local and federal officials in nearly every state have accounts on encrypted messaging apps, according to the review, which found many of those accounts registered to government cellphone numbers. Some were also registered to personal numbers.

The app's origins date back more than a decade, when it was set up by an entrepreneur who goes by the name Moxie Marlinspike, who was briefly head of product security at Twitter after he sold his mobile security startup to the social media company. Marlinspike merged two existing open source apps, one for texting and one for voice calls, to create Signal.

The nonprofit Signal Foundation was set up in 2018 to support the app's operations as well as “investigate the future of private communication,” according to the foundation's website. The foundation says it is a nonprofit “with no advertisers or investors, sustained only by the people who use and value it.”

The foundation's board has five members, including Brian Acton, who cofounded WhatsApp and donated $50 million to set up the foundation.

Associated Press writers Tara Copp, Aamer Madhani and Eric Tucker contributed to this report from Washington.

FILE - An image of the Signal app is shown on a mobile phone in San Francisco, March 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, file)