MANILA – A three-year-old died in Voronezh after a Ukrainian strike hit a residential building in the Russian border region overnight, the same night Russia fired 168 drones at Ukrainian cities, killing three people in Pavlohrad, hours before Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the ASEAN summit on Thursday that American arms deliveries to Ukraine were “unacceptable.”
The warning came at a formal bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Manila, described by the Russian foreign ministry as the first substantive face-to-face between the two men since diplomatic contacts resumed after the Alaska summit. Moscow’s statement said Lavrov briefed Rubio on “the actual situation at the front” and “expressed Russia’s consistent readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict,” while adding that continued US arms deliveries “create obstacles to a peaceful resolution.” Rubio issued no public statement immediately following the session.
Hours before the bilateral began, Ukraine’s Air Force reported that Russia had launched 168 attack drones toward Ukrainian territory overnight, among the largest single-night strikes in several weeks. Air defense systems intercepted 154, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, but the 14 that reached their targets killed three people and wounded dozens in Pavlohrad, a regional industrial city in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast that has been hit repeatedly throughout Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
Ukrainian long-range strikes ran in the same window. Russian regional officials in Voronezh, a city around 200 kilometers from Ukraine’s border, said a three-year-old child was among the dead after a Ukrainian drone hit a residential neighborhood. Russian air defense systems claimed eleven drones downed over Voronezh Oblast through the night.
Lavrov’s framing placed US arms deliveries at the center of Moscow’s conditions for a ceasefire, matching the position Russia has maintained since the Alaska talks stalled. The Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov told Rubio that Washington’s weapon flows to Kyiv “only extend the conflict and undermine the possibility of a negotiated solution,” Euronews reported. The language echoes what Moscow has said at each diplomatic exchange since the start of the year: it will talk, but not while the arms flow.
Donald Trump complicated that equation earlier in the week when he signaled support for Ukraine’s right to strike Russian infrastructure targets, a stance that was still operative when Rubio sat down with Lavrov in Manila. The Manila bilateral had been confirmed late Wednesday, with Russia placing Ukraine settlement and the Persian Gulf situation on the shared agenda. Whether Trump’s pro-strike posture was part of what Rubio brought to the table was not reflected in either side’s post-meeting readout.
Inside Ukraine, the diplomatic exchange landed against a backdrop of continuing political turbulence. Kyiv’s establishment has been consumed since last week by the fallout from protests that began over a defense minister’s firing and ended with Ukraine replacing its army chief amid six days of consecutive street demonstrations, the most significant internal military leadership change since Russia launched its operation in 2022.
Russia’s foreign ministry provided a fuller public account of the meeting than Rubio’s team. The ministry said Lavrov and Rubio also discussed the situation in the Persian Gulf and the impact of the Iran war on global security architecture, suggesting the Manila session ranged beyond Ukraine to cover the broader US-Russia friction points. Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, was also present at the ASEAN meeting but no readout of any Lavrov-Wang Yi exchange had been issued by Thursday evening.
The Russian foreign ministry’s account of the bilateral projected confidence rather than urgency, describing Moscow as consistently prepared for talks while framing Washington as the party blocking progress through continued arms deliveries. That framing is disputed in Kyiv and among European allies: both argue that Russia signals diplomatic readiness only when it expects to lock in territorial gains, and that weapons are the only leverage compelling Moscow to negotiate at all.
Ukraine has not set a public timeline for when it would consider ceasefire talks. Kyiv has argued consistently that any pause without binding security guarantees would leave it exposed to a renewed Russian advance. Ukraine’s new army commander, Mykhailo Drapatyi, appointed after last week’s protests forced out his predecessor, had not by Thursday issued his first public assessment of the military’s position on a peace-track timeline.
What neither side clarified after Thursday’s bilateral is whether the Manila session shifted either party’s fundamental position, or simply updated the diplomatic record. Russia launched 168 drones at Ukrainian cities the night before the meeting and held the meeting regardless. Both things happened simultaneously; in Moscow’s posture, they appear to require no explanation.
