Russia launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles at Kyiv in one of the biggest combined aerial attacks on the Ukrainian capital of the three-year war, damaging several apartment buildings and injuring 15 people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a social media post it had been a ‘tough night’ for Ukraine, and called for new international sanctions to pressure Moscow into agreeing to a ceasefire.
In the early hours of the morning, Reuters witnesses saw and heard successive waves of drones flying over Kyiv, and a series of explosions jolted the city. The capital also reverberated with the sound of anti-aircraft batteries trying to bring down the drones.
Pictures from Reuters photographers showed an orange-red glow lighting up the city as plumes of smoke blew across the horizon.
On the top floor of one apartment building, smoke and flames billowed out of a balcony window as firemen tried to approach.
By daybreak, government officials reported damage in six districts of the Ukrainian capital, and a total so far of 15 people wounded. Three required hospitalisation. Two of the injured were children, the officials said.
The Kyiv city military administration described it as one of the most massive combined drone and missile attacks of the war.
The attacks come as US President Donald Trump is encouraging Russia and Ukraine to sit down for ceasefire talks to end the war, but has pushed back against a European plan to impose new sanctions on Russia.
Halyna Tatarchuk, a 63-year-old pensioner, was in her apartment when a drone hit the building. She and her husband were in the corridor, away from the windows. “That saved us,” she said.
She fled to a bomb shelter at a nearby school, then at daylight returned to inspect the damage. All the windows of her apartment were smashed, and the floor was covered in fragments of glass.
“I’d like Trump to see this,” she said, standing in her kitchen. “What’s he doing? Can he really not see this? ...It’s the destruction of a people, they are just destroying us,” she said, referring to the Russian military.
Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had fired 14 ballistic missiles at targets across Ukraine overnight and launched 250 long-range drones, with Kyiv the main target.
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