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Russian missiles and drones are pounding Ukraine for a second day, as almost continuous heavy attacks hit the country, with Kyiv bearing the brunt of an assault that has killed at least five and injured 44 in the capital.
The overnight attacks followed heavy daylight raids with missiles and drones across the country on Wednesday, one of the longest single attacks of the war.
“As of now, already 5 people have been reported killed in Kyiv as a result of last night’s Russian attack,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote in a statement on social media, adding: “There must be a just response to all these strikes.”
The assault began at 3am on Thursday with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles fired by Moscow as the sound of explosions echoed through Kyiv. Water and power supplies were disrupted in the east of the city.
The scale of the Russian attacks and their intensity appeared to put paid to claims by the US president, Donald Trump, that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine was close, following recent remarks by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, that the war may be approaching an end.
Ukraine’s air force said the latest attack involved 56 missiles of various types and almost 700 drones.
Separately, Ukraine reported that Russian drones on Thursday had struck a UN vehicle in the southern city of Kherson.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said a large apartment block had collapsed in the Darnytskyi district. “Eighteen apartments have been destroyed. A rescue and search operation is ongoing. According to preliminary information, 11 people have been rescued from the building,” he told local media.
“Forty people have been injured in the capital as a result of the enemy large-scale attack. Among them are two children. Thirty-one of the injured have been taken to hospital, including one child,” the mayor added.
Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said “more than 10 people were still believed to be missing” from the attack.
Wednesday’s daytime raids killed at least 14 people and injured more than 80 others. They appear to have included “double-tap” strikes aimed at first responders sent to the sites of attacks, and also struck two-dozen sites associated with Ukraine’s railway system and other critical infrastructure.
After strikes in western Ukraine close to the Hungarian border, Hungary summoned Russia’s ambassador on Thursday, a stark example of the change brought about by the election of Péter Magyar as prime minister after years of cosy relations between Budapest and Moscow under his predecessor Viktor Orbán.
The scale of the recent raids led to warnings that Russia was attempting to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defence systems by swarming them with drones and missiles.
In a late afternoon post on Wednesday, Zelenskyy had described the raids as “one of the longest [and most] massive Russian attacks against Ukraine”, suggesting Moscow’s aim was to spoil the “political atmosphere” during Trump’s visit to China.
He added that Ukraine’s intelligence had assessed Moscow was attempting to overwhelm Kyiv’s air defences through the scale and intensity of the attacks to cause “as much grief and pain as possible”.
The attacks followed Trump’s latest claims of progress in negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow, which were offered on Wednesday with scant detail and followed similar unfounded claims.
“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” the US president told reporters as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.”
His comments follow remarks by Putin in a speech last weekend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was possibly coming to an end.
The attacks came as Ukraine’s battlefield prospects appeared to have been improving in recent months. It has gone from pleading for international help with its defence to offering other countries expertise on how to counter attacks thanks to its domestically developed drone technology.
