A MAJOR Russian airstrike killed 16 people and injured more than 40 in Kyiv and the surrounding region on Thursday as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a failure by Ukraine’s allies to replenish its stock of air defence missiles was costing lives.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched dozens of cruise missiles, as well as ballistic and hypersonic ones, and 168 drones, in the massive overnight attack.
The air force said that nearly 90% of the drones and most of the cruise missiles were downed. It did not specify how many ballistic missiles were launched and whether any were intercepted.
Zelenskiy called Thursday’s strike one of the most “cynical, calculated, and large-scale” of the four-and-a-half-year-long war.
The upper floors of a nine-storey residential block were destroyed in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. He called for Friday to be observed as a day of mourning.
Overall, 30 residential buildings, a school, a children’s hospital, and a kindergarten were damaged in the capital and the surrounding areas, Zelenskiy said.
Private energy company DTEK said it had restored power to some 90,000 households that lost the supply after the attack.
The Russian defence ministry said Moscow attacked Kyiv and the surrounding region with airstrikes and drones, hitting facilities producing drone components, a military depot and a logistics hub, as well as other targets.
Zelenskiy Calls for Patriot Interceptors
The Russian strikes also targeted a border crossing with Moldova in the Black Sea region of Odesa, where repeated attacks on ports and ships have brought Ukraine’s vital agricultural exports to a virtual halt in recent weeks, pressuring global food prices.
As Russia has escalated its ballistic strikes in recent months, Zelenskiy has pleaded with allies to replenish Ukraine’s stock of Patriot interceptors – the only weapon in its arsenal capable of downing a ballistic missile.
“The interceptors for Patriot systems have not yet been replaced, and they are needed every day,” Zelenskiy said on the Telegram app. “Each additional missile saves the lives of our people.”
Moscow, he said, would not seriously negotiate for peace as long as Ukraine had no missile defences to defend its cities. U.S.-mediated talks to end the war stalled earlier this year as Kyiv refused to yield to Russian demands to cede more territory.
“Unfortunately… the world’s response to such attacks is not always adequate,” Zelenskiy said.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X, in response to Zelenskiy’s message, that she was working with member states and partners to provide Ukraine with anti-ballistic capabilities as “the most urgent of priorities”.
Explosions Shook City
Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said that some food warehouses and the facilities of the Red Cross around Kyiv were damaged in the attack, which lasted nearly nine hours.
In recent weeks, fresh fruit and vegetables have occasionally disappeared from the shelves in some supermarkets in Kyiv as a result of strikes on logistics depots of food retailers.
At the missile-damaged apartment block in Solomianskyi district, an elderly woman wailed as rescuers carried out the body of her grandson, Reuters TV showed.
She stood sobbing beside his body after he was placed on the ground, before medics moved in to support her.
While most of the dead were in the Ukrainian capital, one person was also killed in the surrounding region, an official said on Telegram.
Ukraine has also increased its attacks on Russia, targeting oil facilities and logistics infrastructure to try to undermine Moscow’s ability to wage war.
Overnight, authorities in Russia’s Tatarstan region – 1,000 km (620 miles) east of Moscow – reported a disruption at an industrial complex in the city of Nizhnekamsk following a Ukrainian drone attack, adding that some residential apartments were also damaged. Ukraine’s military said it hit the TANECO oil refinery and an oil terminal in Krasnodar region.
A drone crashed into Romania, a NATO and European Union member state, during the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Romanian defence ministry said. A drone also came down on Moldovan territory, President Maia Sandu said.
Ukraine has handed peace proposals to U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for a plan to end the war, Zelenskiy said this month.
The Kremlin said on Thursday there was no information yet on a possible visit to Moscow by Kushner and Witkoff, who were last in the Russian capital in January and have not yet visited Kyiv. No date has yet been confirmed for a proposed visit to Ukraine, according to one source familiar with the discussions. (Reuters)
