Russia pummelled Kyiv with the largest drone attack of the war, killing one person, injuring at least 23 and damaging buildings across the capital hours after US President Donald Trump spoke to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, officials said yesterday.
Air raid sirens, the whine of kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated from early evening until dawn as Russia launched what Ukraine’s Air Force said was a total of 539 drones and 11 missiles.
Families huddled in underground metro stations for shelter and acrid smoke hung over the city centre. Kyiv’s military administration chief said yesterday afternoon a body had been found in the wreckage of one of the strike sites.
Outside a high-rise apartment block damaged by a drone, residents stood around surveying the scene as the clean-up job began. Some cried. Others looked on silently.
“I woke up to the sound of explosions, first the Shahed drones started buzzing, and then the explosions began,” said 40-year-old resident Maria Hilchenko. “Then people started screaming outside. The explosions from the Shaheds kept coming.” Shahed drones are an Iranian design, a variant of which is now manufactured in Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the attack ‘deliberately massive and cynical’, noting the first sirens blared as news came in of Putin and Trump’s call.
Kyiv officials said the attack damaged about 40 apartment blocks, passenger railway infrastructure, five schools and kindergartens, cafes and many cars in six of Kyiv’s 10 districts. Poland said the consular section of its embassy was damaged in central Kyiv, adding that staff were unharmed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a Chinese component had been found in one of the Shahed drones attacking Kyiv, adding it had been found shortly after China’s consulate in the southern city of Odesa suffered minor damage in a separate strike.
Russian air strikes on Kyiv have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war.
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