Ukraine’s security service released footage Wednesday of its attack on Russian war planes at multiple airbases across the country. In the span of a few hours on Sunday, nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet was destroyed or damaged with cheaply made drones sneaked into Russian territory, according to Ukrainian officials.

Nearly 1 million Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a new study, a grisly measure of the human cost of Russian President’s Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked three-year assault on its neighbor.

Drones are “ubiquitous, because they are quite useful, and they're demonstrating that every day in Ukraine,” one analyst told NBC News.

The war in Ukraine and the existential threat that Russia poses to European security has topped NATO’s agenda in each of its summits since 2022.

The Ukrainian operation was “grounds for a nuclear attack,” declared Vladmir Solovyov, a firebrand host on Russian state TV, calling for strikes on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv, and beyond.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Defense Minister Rustem Umerov would sit down with Russian officials at the second round of peace talks on Monday.

But so far, Trump has taken no action, and Russia continued to inflict pain on Ukraine as well. Earlier on Sunday, Moscow deployed a record breaking 472 one-way attack drones as well as several ballistic and cruise missiles against the country.

Russian and Ukrainian delegates met in Istanbul on Monday for their second set of direct peace talks, a day after Kyiv launched a shock drone attack on Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers, in an operation that President Volodymyr Zelensky said was a year and a half in the making.

It restated Moscow's demands that Ukraine become a neutral country - ruling out membership of NATO - and that it protect the rights of Russian speakers, make Russian an official language and enact a legal ban on glorification of Nazism. Ukraine rejects the Nazi charge as absurd and denies discriminating against Russian speakers.

Officials from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday failed to reach a ceasefire but agreed to exchange more prisoners.

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks.