Hours before Vance and Zelenskyy were set to meet, a Russian drone with a high-explosive warhead hit the protective confinement shell of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Kyiv region, the Ukrainian president said. Radiation levels have not increased, Zelenskyy and the U.N. atomic agency said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that U.S. and Russian officials would meet in Munich on Friday and that Ukraine was also invited, however Kyiv responded that it did not expect to hold talks with Russia in the German city.

Trump said on Wednesday he had held a "highly productive phone call" with Putin and they had agreed to start negotiations immediately.