Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine on Tuesday, hitting dozens of civilian targets in Kyiv, including a large apartment block, killing at least 15 people and wounding scores, Ukrainian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian forces sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine. He described the destruction in Kyiv as among the “most horrific” of the war in the capital.
About 27 locations in Kyiv were hit during several waves of attacks throughout the night, and residential buildings, educational institutions and critical infrastructure facilities were damaged, officials said.
A ballistic missile struck a nine-storey residential building in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district, wiping out a whole section of it, which was flattened into a pile of debris.
Emergency workers were combing through the rubble and dousing the flames with hoses. They used a crane to lower a wounded elderly woman in a stretcher out of the window of a flat in an adjacent section of the building.
“I have never seen anything like this before. It is simply horrific. When they started pulling people out, and everyone was cut up, elderly people and children … I do not know how long they can continue to torment us, ordinary people,” said Viktoriia Vovchenko, 57, who lives nearby.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said 14 people were killed in Kyiv and one more in Odesa, in southern Ukraine. Nearly 100 were injured between Kyiv, Odesa and Chernihiv, in the north, officials said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one of the deceased was a 62-year-old U.S. citizen, who died from shrapnel wounds.
Front Burner22:48Cheap and deadly: How drones are reshaping war
Ukraine on agenda at G7, minus Trump
Zelenskyy is in Canada on Tuesday for the G7 summit, hoping to gather more support for tighter sanctions against Russia and continued military aid for Ukraine.
Trump has reoriented U.S. policy away from supporting Kyiv and has so far resisted calls from European allies to impose tighter sanctions on Moscow for rejecting calls for a ceasefire.
At the G7 summit, taking place in Kananaskis, Alta., Trump called for the group to readmit Russia, which was expelled in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.
Ukraine has also launched drones deep into Russia, although its attacks have not caused similar damage to civilian targets. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had intercepted and destroyed 147 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory, including the Moscow region, overnight.
Russia’s full-scale invasion is now in its fourth year, and the hostilities have heated up in recent weeks as Kyiv and Moscow failed to reach any agreement during two rounds of peace talks in Istanbul.
Russian troops are pressing on with a grinding advance in eastern Ukraine and have opened a new front in the Sumy region in the northeast, despite calls for a ceasefire from Trump, who promised to end the war quickly.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine war has changed drastically over time — particularly in terms of how he frames Russian President Vladimir Putin. Andrew Chang breaks down Trump’s criticism of Putin following Russia’s latest attack by explaining what it may signal about how the U.S. proceeds.
Images provided by Getty Images, The Canadian Press and Reuters.