Next week, an already very public debate over whether Ukraine should be allowed to use long-range Western-supplied missiles on Russian soil will come under an even brighter international spotlight.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen (not pictured), amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Kyiv, Ukraine September 20,

Zelenskyy is gambling that his surprise attack into Russia can convince Putin to negotiate an end to the 2½-year-old war which has produced an estimated one million casualties. But Putin continues to rely on the sheer weight of numbers to grind Ukraine down.

Ukraine's foreign minister said on Saturday that Russia is planning strikes on Ukrainian nuclear facilities before the winter, and urged the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog and Ukraine's allies to establish permanent monitoring missions at the country's nuclear plants.

(Reuters) -Russian forces struck a multi-storey apartment building in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, on Saturday evening, wounding 21 people and prompting an evacuation of some of its residents,