A major Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine's capital early Thursday killed at least 18 people and injured 48, local authorities said.
Among the dead were four children, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said. The numbers are expected to rise.
Russia launched drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's city administration.
A five-story residential building in the Darnytskyi district was directly struck. “Everything is destroyed,” Tkachenko said. A strike in central Kyiv left a major road strewn with shattered glass.
The attack affected over 20 locations across the capital, local authorities said. Nearly 100 buildings were damaged, including a shopping mall in the city centre, and thousands of windows were shattered, according to Tkachenko.
Rescue teams were on site to pull people trapped underneath the rubble.
Several floors of the five-story building in the Darnytskyi district had reportedly collapsed, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration, which reported "significant destruction." Another 16-storey building was also damaged.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said explosions were first heard around 9:30 pm local time (8:30 pm CEST) on Wednesday, and air defences were activated around midnight.
Fires also broke out at a three-storey office and a 25-storey building in the Dniprovskyi district. A residential building, an office, an educational institution, and two non-residential buildings were damaged in the Shevchenkivskyi district, Klitschko said.
The wave of Russian strikes continued through the night and into Thursday morning, with new explosions heard around 5:30 am (4:30 CEST), as rescue workers were still searching for victims under the rubble of buildings hit by ballistic missiles only hours earlier.
Thursday's attack is the first major combined Russian mass drone and missile strike to hit Kyiv since US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska earlier this month to discuss ending Moscow's three-year war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his call for harsher US sanctions to cripple the Russian economy if Putin does not demonstrate seriousness about ending the war.
“All deadlines have already been broken, dozens of opportunities for diplomacy ruined,” Zelenskyy said.
While a diplomatic push to end the war appeared to gain momentum shortly after that meeting, very few details have emerged about the next steps.
