A pall of acrid smoke hung over Kyiv on Friday morning following a night of intensive Russian strikes that hit almost every district of the Ukrainian capital, injuring 23 people, officials say.
The hours of darkness were 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 Russian President Vladimir Putin, after which Trump said he was “disappointed” that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine.
Moscow says 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.
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.
Friday’s attacks were the latest in a string of major Russian air strikes on Ukraine that have intensified in recent weeks as ceasefire talks have largely stalled.
War in Ukraine has been raging for more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Following his conversation with Putin on Thursday, Trump said that “no progress” to end the fighting had been made.
“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed,” Trump said.
“I’m just saying I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”
The Kremlin reiterated that it would continue to seek to remove “the root causes of the war in Ukraine”. Putin has sought to return Ukraine to Russia’s sphere of influence and said last week that “the whole of Ukraine is ours”.
Responding to Trump’s comments on Friday, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC that as long as it was not possible to secure Russia’s aims through political-diplomatic means, “we are continuing our Special Military Operation” – Russia’s preferred name for the invasion.
Meanwhile, President Zelensky said that he hoped to speak to Trump about the supply of US weapons after a decision in Washington to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including those used for air defences.
Kyiv has warned that the move would impede its ability to defend Ukraine against escalating airstrikes and Russian advances on the frontlines.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said “we’re giving weapons” and “we haven’t” completely paused the flow of weapons. He blamed former President Joe Biden for “emptying out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves”.
[BBC]