Russia fired its biggest-ever aerial barrage at Ukraine early yesterday, killing four people and setting the seat of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv ablaze in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky warned would prolong the war.
The attack was the first to hit Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers, a sprawling government complex at the heart of Kyiv.
Drone strikes also damaged several high-rise buildings in Kyiv, according to emergency services.
Russia has shown no sign of halting its three-and-a-half-year invasion of Ukraine, pushing hardline demands for ending the war, despite efforts by the United States to broker a peace deal
European condemnation
Russia, which denies targeting civilians in Ukraine, said it had struck a plant and a logistics hub in Kyiv.
Its defence ministry said ‘’no strikes were carried out on other targets within the boundaries of Kyiv”, explicitly denying responsibility for the government building strike.
Police cordoned off the area surrounding the building, the roof and upper floors of which sustained damage.
“We will restore the buildings. But we cannot bring back lost lives. The enemy terrorises and kills our people every day throughout the country,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
She later posted a video from inside the damaged floor showing shattered offices and burned walls.
Russia fired at least 810 drones and 13 missiles at Ukraine between late Saturday and early Sunday, in a new record, according to the Ukrainian air force.
“Such killings now, when real diplomacy could have already begun long ago, are a deliberate crime and a prolongation of the war,” Zelensky said.
He discussed the attack in a call with French President, Emmanuel Macron, and said that France would help Ukraine strengthen its defence.
Macron, on X, condemned the attack and said Russia “is locking itself ever deeper into the logic of war and terror”. France stood by Ukraine, he said.
UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, and EU chief, Ursula von der Leyen, also slammed the attack.
“Once again, the Kremlin is mocking diplomacy,” von der Leyen wrote on X.
The “cowardly strikes” show that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is not serious about peace”, Starmer said in a statement.
The barrage came after more than two dozen European countries pledged to patrol any agreement to end the war, some of whom said they were willing to deploy troops on the ground.
Kyiv insists on Western-backed security guarantees to prevent future Russian attacks, but Putin warns that any Western troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable and legitimate targets.
Efforts in recent weeks by US President Donald Trump to end the war have so far yielded little progress.
Meantime, on the front line in the east, Moscow continued to claim territory in costly grinding battles, capturing another village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia occupies around 20 percent of the country in total.
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