(Reuters) – Russia launched waves of missiles and drones on Kyiv before dawn on Thursday, killing 12 people including a six-year-old boy, and wounding 135 others, officials in the Ukrainian capital said.
Over 1,200 police and rescuers dealt with the consequences of the attack and the Interior Ministry said that searches for people buried under rubble continued past 4:30 p.m. (1330 GMT).
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia launched more than 300 drones and eight missiles. “Today the world has once again seen Russia’s response to our desire for peace … Therefore, peace without strength is impossible,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram app.
City authorities announced a day of mourning to be held on Friday for the victims.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it targeted and hit Ukrainian military airfields and ammunition depots as well as businesses linked to what it called Kyiv’s military-industrial complex.
The Interior Ministry said 11 children were wounded, the largest number hurt in a single attack on the city since Russia started its full-scale invasion almost three and a half years ago.
Explosions rocked Kyiv from about midnight onwards and blazes lit up the night sky.
Yurii Kravchuk, 62, stood wrapped in a blanket next to a damaged building with a bandage around his head. He had heard the missile alert but did not get to a shelter in time, he told Reuters.
“I started waking up my wife and then there was an explosion. My daughter ended up in the hospital,” he said.
Russia, which denies deliberately targeting civilians in the war, has stepped up air strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines of the war – situated in the east and south – in recent months.
Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed since Moscow invaded in 2022.
Kyiv and Moscow have held three rounds of talks in Istanbul this year that yielded exchanges of prisoners and bodies, but no breakthrough to defuse the conflict.
BURNING RUINS
At one location in Kyiv, rescuers spent more than three hours reaching a man trapped in rubble by cutting through the wall of a neighbouring apartment, the Interior Ministry said.
The man talked to the emergency services during the operation and was pulled out alive, it added.
A five-month-old baby was among the wounded, with five children hospitalised, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said on national television.
Schools and hospitals were among the buildings damaged across 27 locations in the capital, officials said.
“The attack was extremely insidious and deliberately calculated to overload the air defence system,” Zelenskiy wrote on X.
He posted a video of burning ruins, saying people were still trapped under the rubble of one partially-ruined residential building as of the morning.
The president said the attacks had killed a six-year-old and the boy’s mother, but later edited the post to remove reference to the mother.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday Washington would start imposing tariffs and other measures on Russia “10 days from today” if Moscow showed no progress toward ending the conflict.
“This is Putin’s response to Trump’s deadlines,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. “The world must respond with a tribunal and maximum pressure.”
The air force reported five direct missile hits and 21 drone hits in 12 locations. Ukrainian air defence units downed 288 drones and three cruise missiles, the air force added.
