KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A mass Russian drone and missile attack on Ukraine’s capital early Thursday killed at least four people and injured 24, local authorities said.
Among the dead were two children, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said, citing preliminary information. The numbers are expected to rise. Rescue teams were on site to pull people trapped underneath the rubble.
Russia launched decoy drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv’s city administration. At least 20 locations across seven districts of Kyiv had impacts. Nearly 100 buildings were damaged, including a shopping mall in the city center, and thousands of windows were shattered, he said.
A five-story residential building in the Darnytskyi district was hit directly. “Everything is destroyed,” Tkachenko said. A strike in central Kyiv left a major road strewn with shattered glass.
Thursday’s attack is the first major combined Russian mass drone and missile attack to strike Kyiv since U.S. President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska earlier this month to discuss ending the three-year war in Ukraine.
While a diplomatic push to end the war appeared to gain momentum shortly after that meeting, very few details have emerged about the next steps.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is hoping for harsher U.S. sanctions to cripple the Russian economy if Putin does not demonstrate seriousness about ending the war.
