Just as US-Russia talks related to Ukraine have recently hit a stoppage and potential breaking point - with the cancelation of the Budapest summit - Russia has been significantly upping its missile and drone strikes across Ukraine.

The fact that Ukraine's energy grid is long struggling to keep up with power demand, also as vital infrastructure keeps getting pummeled amid rolling blackouts, means the country is in for a very tough winter. Fresh data demonstrates that October represented a high point in terms of the rate of Russian missile attacks on Ukraine.

"Russia fired more missiles at Ukraine in October than in any month since at least the start of 2023, an AFP analysis of Ukrainian data showed," the outlet has found.

That record shows that "Russia’s army fired 270 missiles in October, up 46% on the previous month, according to an AFP analysis of daily data published by Ukraine’s air force."

The Ukrainian government had only started publishing detailed statistics of these strikes at the beginning of 2023, and 270 strikes marks the highest-one month tally since.

President Zelensky has commented, "Russia's task is to create chaos and apply psychological pressure on the population through strikes on energy facilities and railways."

As for drone attacks, this number is in the thousands - with many of these likely being decoy drones, but also highly destructive suicide drones which often come in waves, overwhelming Ukraine's air defenses.

"Russia also fired 5,298 long-range drones at Ukraine in October, the same data showed, down by around six percent on the number it fired in September but still close to record highs," AFP found.

The number of Ukrainian drones sent on Russian territory is also likely in the thousands. These have actually been highly effective in damaging dozens of Russian oil refineries and defense sector factories in the last several months - with some of the same oil sites having been hit more than once.

More attacks into the weekend...

Kiev's strategy is to attempt to cripple Putin's military machine by impacting cash flow to the defense ministry via oil exports - though so far this has appeared limited in its effect, also as Moscow keeps finding ways to also circumvent Western sanctions.