Kyiv
One person has been killed and 26 others were injured after a night of intensive Russian strikes on almost every district in Kyiv, officials say.
A pall of acrid smoke hung over the Ukrainian capital on Friday morning following hours of nightfall punctuated by the staccato of air defence guns, buzz of drones and large explosions. Ukraine said Russia fired a record 550 drones and 11 missiles.
The strikes came hours after a call between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, after which Trump said he was “disappointed” that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine.
Moscow says the war will continue for as long as it is necessary to reach its objectives.
Russia’s overnight air strikes broke another record, Ukraine’s air force said, with 72 of the 550 drones penetrating air defences – up from a previous record of 537 launched last Saturday night.
Air raid alerts sounded for more than eight hours as several waves of attacks struck Kyiv, the “main target of the strikes”, the air force said on the messaging app Telegram.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned one of the most “demonstratively significant and cynical” attacks of the war, describing a “harsh, sleepless night”.
Noting that it came directly after Putin’s call with Trump, Zelensky added in a post on Telegram: “Russia once again demonstrates that it does not intend to end the war”.
He called on international allies – particularly the US – to increase pressure on Moscow and impose greater sanctions.
Footage shared on social media by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed firefighters battling to extinguish fires in Kyiv after Russia’s large-scale overnight attack.
Rescuers also found a dead body while going through the rubble in the Svyatoshynsky district, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said.
According to Ukrainian authorities, railway infrastructure was damaged and schools, buildings and cars set ablaze across the capital.
Poland’s Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski, said the Polish consulate had also been damaged.
The Russian strikes also hit the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Chernihiv.
Russia’s defence ministry said the “massive strike” had been launched in response to the “terrorist acts of the Kyiv regime”.
The acting governor of Russia’s southern Rostov region said a woman was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a village not far from the border on Friday night.
