The first senior Trump administration official was expected to visit Ukraine, a day after Russia released an American prisoner in a development that President Trump called a positive signal for cease-fire talks.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s trip comes amid anxiety in Kyiv and among American allies about whether U.S. support for the Ukrainian war effort will be maintained now that Mr. Trump has returned to the White House.
The Trump administration has already sought an arrangement for the United States to secure rights to Ukrainian natural resources, including rare earth minerals, as a guarantee for further U.S. assistance.
Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that he was sending Mr. Bessent to Ukraine because “this war must and will end soon — too much death and destruction.”
Mr. Trump, who has made American spending in a variety of areas a focus of the early days of his new administration, also wrote that the visit would touch on American assistance to Ukraine. The United States, he wrote, had spent billions of dollars “with too little to show” for it.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said he welcomed the visit by Mr. Bessent. “We are already prepared for meetings with representatives of the United States — negotiations will begin soon,” Mr. Zelensky said in his evening address to Ukrainians on Tuesday.
Mr. Trump’s focus on securing the mining rights was reflected in the choice of Mr. Bessent to make the first high-level visit, rather than a senior security or military official to discuss the war.
Hours after Mr. Trump announced the visit, Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine that included a volley of ballistic missiles fired at Kyiv, the capital.
The missile strike, which took place shortly before 5 a.m., killed one person and wounded four others, including a 9-year-old girl, according to the Kyiv city administration. It was unclear if Mr. Bessent was in Kyiv at the time.
Falling debris from interceptions by air defense missiles over Kyiv scattered debris that caused fires in buildings in four districts, and explosions echoed through the capital for several minutes.
The missile volley in Ukraine came also hours after Russia released an American prisoner, Marc Fogel, in what Mr. Trump said he hoped would be an initial step toward negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Zelensky, in a post on X, also voiced support for ending the war. “This Russian terror against Ukraine will not stop on its own,” he wrote. “Right now, we need the unity and support of all our partners in the fight for a just end to this war.”
Overall, Russia fired six ballistic missiles and 123 exploding drones at Ukraine overnight, after a period of nearly a month in which Russia has largely refrained from using ballistic missiles. Fighting also continued along the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces continued assaults.
The Ukrainian military reported that 149 aerial bombs were dropped from airplanes and more than 2,000 short-range drone strikes were fired at frontline positions.
In another missile attack on Ukraine, on Tuesday, Russia struck the country’s main natural gas producing region, Poltava, continuing attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Beyond Ukraine, the Polish military reported on Tuesday that a Russian military plane briefly entered its airspace, although the military said that it was in contact with its Russian counterparts. The error was attributed to a problem with the plane’s navigation system.
