A RUSSIAN drone strike has killed three people in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, authorities said today, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Moscow was planning another large-scale barrage despite plans for further US-brokered peace talks this weekend.

The latest attack followed a US think tank report saying that the number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides during the war could reach two million by the spring.

The Zaporizhzhia strike on Wednesday night caused a major blaze in a block of flats, according to the emergency services.

Firefighters also worked all night to put out fires in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, where two people were injured, officials said.

Mr Zelensky said intelligence reports indicated that Russia was assembling forces for a major aerial attack.

The ongoing attacks discredit the peace talks, the president said on Wednesday night. “Every single Russian strike does,” he said.

Negotiations between the two sides are poised to resume on Sunday.

But European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas attempted to derail the talks again, claiming the ongoing fighting showed Russia did not take them seriously.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies report said that Russia had suffered 1.2 million casualties, including up to 325,000 troop deaths, between February 2022 and December 2025.

The Washington-based centre has close ties to the US military establishment, its president and CEO for the last 26 years being former US deputy defence secretary John J Hamre.

“Despite claims of battlefield momentum in Ukraine, the data shows that Russia is paying an extraordinary price for minimal gains and is in decline as a major power,” the report said.

“No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II.”

It estimated that Ukraine had suffered 500,000-600,000 military casualties, including up to 140,000 deaths.