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Russia has launched a second straight night of massive drone and ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine, with the capital city, Kyiv, once again the focus of heavy attack.
Across the country nine people were killed, including three children in the Kyiv region, and dozens more injured, according to reports on Sunday morning.
The air raids came as Russia and Ukraine exchanged hundreds more prisoners Saturday in a continuing major swap that amounted to a rare moment of cooperation amid otherwise failed efforts to reach a ceasefire.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia’s attacks indicated Moscow was “prolonging the war” and repeated his call for ramped-up sanctions.
But he also said he expected officials to press on with a prisoner swap agreed during talks last week in Istanbul.
Russian strikes hit locations right across Ukraine from the southern coast and east to the west.
Four people were reported dead in the western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region, and one in Mykolaiv in the south.
“Last night, the Khmelnytskyi region came under hostile Russian fire, which resulted in the destruction of civilian infrastructure … Unfortunately, four people were killed,” Sergiy Tyurin, the deputy head of the regional military administration, said in a Telegram post.
Emergency services posted that four people were killed and 16 injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack”.
The intensity and frequency of this weekend’s strikes put paid to the claim by the US president, Donald Trump, that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, is interested in “peace”.
At time of writing, Trump, who has been vocal in talking up his peace efforts, had not commented on the weekend’s heavy strikes.
The Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said “there are already 10 injured” in Kyiv as of 3am on Sunday, adding that a student dormitory in Holosiivskyi district had been hit by a drone and one of its outside walls was on fire.
The attacks meant Kyiv Day – celebrated on the last Sunday in May – began with exhausted residents once again sheltered in bunkers, metro stations and basements.
Odesa, Dnipro, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Konotop, Chernihiv, Ternopil, and Kharkiv were also hit according to local media reports.
With waves of drones beginning at around midnight on Saturday, accompanied by warnings of ballistic missile launches as the night wore on, a Guardian reporter in Kyiv heard three drones reach the centre of the city, despite action by air defences, before the sound of loud detonations.
Russian authorities meanwhile reported that a dozen drones flying towards Moscow had been downed.
The latest fire comes as the two sides pursue their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The attack on Kyiv began with Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the city’s military administration, warning “the night will not be easy” as residents tracked waves of launches on air raid warning apps.
At one point Tkachenko reported “more than a dozen enemy drones” were flying around the capital.
“Some of the drones over Kyiv and the surrounding area have already been dealt with. But the new ones are still entering the capital,” he posted.
