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Russian forces have launched a drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, killing at least one person, as officials from Ukraine and the United States sought to rework a plan proposed by Washington to end the war.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the overnight attack on Kyiv damaged residential buildings in the Pecherskyi and Dniprovskyi districts.

“In Kyiv, as a result of a night attack, two people were killed, six were injured, and 18 people were rescued, including three children,” the service said.

Another attack on Brovarsky, Bila Tserkva and Vyshgorod districts, hours later, wounded a 14-year-old child, it added.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The attack followed talks between US and Ukrainian representatives in Switzerland’s Geneva to thrash out Washington’s so-called 28-point plan, which Kyiv and its European allies saw as a Kremlin wish list.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly address late on Monday, said the talks in Geneva mean the “list of the necessary steps to end the war can become doable”.

But he said there remained “sensitive issues” that he will discuss with US President Donald Trump

“After Geneva, there are fewer points – no longer 28 – and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this framework. There is still work for all of us to do together – it is very challenging – to finalise the document, and we must do everything with dignity,” he said.

“Ukraine will never be an obstacle to peace – this is our principle, a shared principle, and millions of Ukrainians are counting on, and deserve, a dignified peace,” he added.

No Trump-Zelenskyy meeting scheduled

Trump, too, hinted at new progress.

“Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening,” the US president wrote earlier on Monday on his Truth Social platform.

At the White House, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there were a couple of points of disagreement remaining, but “we’re confident that we’ll be able to work through those.”

She said Trump wanted a deal as quickly as possible, but there was no meeting currently scheduled between the US president and Zelenskyy.

Trump, who returned to office this year pledging to end the war quickly, has reoriented US policy from staunch support for Kyiv towards accepting some of Russia’s justifications for its 2022 invasion.

US policy towards the war has been inconsistent. Trump’s hastily arranged Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August led to worries that Washington was prepared to accept many Russian demands, but ultimately resulted in more US pressure on Russia.

The latest, 28-point peace proposal again caught many in the US government, Kyiv and Europe off-guard and prompted new concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted towards Moscow.

The plan would require Kyiv to cede more territory, accept curbs on its military and bar it from ever joining NATO, conditions Kyiv has long rejected as tantamount to surrender.

It would also do nothing to allay broader European fears of further Russian aggression.

Ukraine’s European allies drew up a counter-proposal which, according to the Reuters news agency, would halt fighting at the present front lines, leaving discussions of territory for later, and include a NATO-style US security guarantee for Ukraine.

A new version of a draft worked on in Geneva has not been published.

Kremlin slams EU proposal

An adviser to Zelenskyy who attended the talks in Geneva told The Associated Press news agency they managed to discuss almost all the plan’s points, and one unresolved issue is that of territory, which can only be decided at the head-of-state level.

Oleksandr Bevz also said the US showed “great openness and understanding” that security guarantees are the cornerstone of any agreement for Ukraine.

He said the US would continue working on the plan, and then the leaders of Ukraine and the US would meet. After that, the plan would be presented to Russia.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking to reporters, welcomed the “interim result” of the Geneva talks, saying the US proposal “has now been modified in significant parts”, without details.

Merz added that Moscow must now become engaged in the process.

“The next step must be that Russia must come to the table,” he said in Angola, where he was attending a summit between African and European Union countries. “This is a laborious process. It will move forward at most in smaller steps this week. I do not expect there to be a breakthrough this week.”

The Kremlin said it had yet to see the revised peace plan.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov added there was no plan for US and Russian delegations to meet this week, but the Russian side remained “open for such contacts”.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the plan the Kremlin had received before the Geneva talks had many provisions that “seem quite acceptable” to Moscow. But he described European proposals “floating around” as “completely unconstructive”.

Countries supporting Kyiv – part of the “coalition of the willing” – are meanwhile due to hold a video call on Tuesday following the Geneva talks.

Turkiye also said it hopes to build bridges between Russia and Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said he spoke to Putin by telephone and told him Ankara will contribute to any diplomatic effort to facilitate direct contact between Russia and Ukraine.

Erdogan “stated that Turkiye will continue its efforts for the termination of the Russia-Ukraine war with a fair and lasting peace”, his office said.

Officials from the US, Ukraine, and national security advisers from France, UK and Germany to hold talks in Geneva today to discuss plan to end the war.

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court may reveal Thursday whether it intends to uphold Proposition 8, and if so, whether an estimated 18,000 same-sex marriages will remain valid, during a high-stakes televised session that has sparked plans for demonstrations throughout the state.

By now, the court already has drafted a decision on the case, with an author and at least three other justices willing to sign it. Oral arguments sometimes result in changes to the draft, but rarely do they change the majority position. The ruling is due in 90 days.

Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote the historic May 15, 2008, decision that gave same-sex couples the right to marry, will be the one to watch during the hearing because he is often in the majority and usually writes the rulings in the most controversial cases.

Most legal analysts expect that the court will garner enough votes to uphold existing marriages but not enough to overturn Proposition 8. The dissenters in May’s 4-3 marriage ruling said the decision should be left to the voters.

One conservative constitutional scholar has said that the court could both affirm its historic May 15 ruling giving gays equality and uphold Proposition 8 by requiring the state to use a term other than “marriage” and apply it to all couples, gay and straight.

“The alternatives are for the court to accept Proposition 8 and authorize the people to rewrite the Constitution in a way that undermines a basic principle of equality,” said Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec. If the court overturns Proposition 8, “that is the short course toward impeachment.”

The court is under intense pressure. Opponents of gay marriage have threatened to mount a campaign to boot justices who vote to overturn the initiative. The last time voters ousted state high court justices was in 1986, when then-Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues lost a retention election.

On the other side, the Legislature has passed two resolutions opposing Proposition 8, and protests are being planned statewide to urge the court to throw out the measure.

Thousands are expected to descend Thursday on the San Francisco Civic Center to watch the hearing live on a giant outdoor screen, just steps from the courtroom where the justices will be prodding lawyers in a jammed courtroom.

“It is one of the most important cases in the history of the California Supreme Court,” said Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California. “The core tenet of our constitutional democracy is that fundamental rights of historically disadvantaged minorities are not dependent on the whim of the majority.”

The challenges to the initiative are based on novel legal theories. Gay rights lawyers argue that the measure was an illegal constitutional revision, rather than a more limited amendment. The court has struck down constitutional amendments passed by voters as impermissible revisions only twice in its history, and there are relatively few precedents on the subject.

“While no case forecloses the revision argument, there is no case that really supports it, and most of the cases mildly cut against it,” said UC Davis law professor Vikram Amar.

Upholding existing same-sex marriages would be a lower hurdle for the court, Amar and other scholars said.

“There is enough ambiguity in Prop. 8 that the court could easily interpret the measure as not applying to existing marriages,” Amar said. “That is a legally plausible interpretation, and it is so clearly the just interpretation that I think getting four votes for that seems easier.”

State Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s office will ask the court to uphold the marriages and strike down the initiative as an illegal repeal of an inalienable right without compelling justification. Brown’s argument is even more novel than the revision challenge, which his office said had no merit.

The Proposition 8 case has attracted more friend-of-the-court briefs than the marriage dispute that led to last year’s historic ruling — the previous record-holder. Most of the outside groups that have weighed in have asked the court to overturn the initiative.

Pepperdine’s Kmiec said replacing the word “marriage” with another term would both leave intact the court’s May 15 ruling and deter a recall campaign that could damage the court as an institution. He said couples could still marry in their religious communities.

That would “restore a religious meaning to a word that is a religious word,” he said. Kmiec, a Catholic, said he reluctantly voted for Proposition 8 “because of the instructions of my faith community” but felt “entirely unsatisfied” with the outcome.

“I am not sure Ron George wants to be remembered as the chief justice who denied the principle of fundamental equality,” the law professor said. “It is not a legacy we should ask anyone to live with, and it is wholly unnecessary.”

George, a moderate Republican, is considered a swing vote on the court and, until the marriage decision, was widely regarded as cautious. Scholars have said the marriage ruling would be pivotal to his legacy on the court.

“It is difficult to imagine, although obviously plausible, that the majority of justices who ruled in the marriage cases would so quickly endorse an undermining of at least a significant portion of their ruling,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Pepperdine law school Dean Kenneth Starr, hired by the Proposition 8 campaign, will urge the court to uphold the measure and declare that existing same-sex marriages are no longer valid. Benefits, such as inheritance, acquired by couples during their marriages would not be taken away, but couples would have to register as domestic partners to protect their future rights.

“The people ultimately decided,” Starr wrote in his final brief in the case. “Under our system of constitutional government, that is the end of the matter.”

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[email protected]

Times staff writer Jessica Garrison also contributed to this report.

The hearing is scheduled to be shown live from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday on the California Channel, available to cable customers. (A list of local channel numbers for this service is available at www.calchannel.com/channel “> www.calchannel.com/channel /carriage/ .) The hearing also will be streamed live on www.calchannel.com .

FBI Director Kash Patel visited Beijing last week to hold talks with Chinese officials on fentanyl and law enforcement issues, according to sources familiar with the trip. The visit came after a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where both leaders highlighted a new “consensus” on controlling the flow of the deadly synthetic opioid.

Patel’s stay in Beijing lasted about a day and was not officially announced by either government. The trip coincided with China’s announcement that it would adjust its catalogue of drug-related precursor chemicals and require export licenses for shipments to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Why It Matters

Fentanyl continues to be the leading cause of overdose deaths in the United States, making international cooperation on its regulation a critical security concern. The trip signals a shift in U.S. policy from punitive measures to bilateral collaboration with China on law enforcement issues.

It also has broader implications for trade relations, as President Trump had already halved tariffs on Chinese goods following the summit, linking law enforcement cooperation with broader economic negotiations.

The key stakeholders include the U.S. government, led by FBI Director Kash Patel and President Trump, as well as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is overseeing the implementation of mechanisms to curb fentanyl exports. Chinese authorities, including the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Commerce Ministry, are responsible for regulating precursor chemicals and managing export controls.

North American countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are also involved, as they are primary recipients of controlled chemical exports and partners in enforcement.

What’s Next

The details of the Trump-Xi consensus are expected to be finalized through a new bilateral working group. China will continue to regulate and monitor precursor chemical exports more strictly, while U.S. and Chinese law enforcement agencies may deepen their cooperation. The visit may also influence broader trade dynamics, including the resumption of U.S. soybean purchases by China and the suspension of previously announced rare-earth export curbs.

With information from Reuters.