KYIV – Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled part of his trip to South Africa yesterday after Russia fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Kyiv, killing at least eight people in the deadliest attack on the capital in months.
Ukraine has been battered with aerial attacks throughout Russia’s three-year invasion but deadly strikes on Kyiv, better protected by air defences than other cities, are less common.
The attacks threw more doubt on already fraught US efforts to push Russia and Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, hours after US president Donald Trump lashed out at Zelensky for refusing to accept Moscow’s occupation of Crimea as a condition for peace.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is yet to respond to Zelensky’s proposal to completely halt air attacks on civilian targets and last month rejected a US-Ukrainian call for a full and unconditional ceasefire.
“It has been 44 days since Ukraine agreed to a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes… And it has been 44 days of Russia continuing to kill our people,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
The Ukrainian leader, who was on a trip to South Africa, announced he would return to Ukraine immediately after meeting the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The strikes must be stopped immediately and unconditionally,” he added.
Trump on Wednesday accused Zelensky of frustrating peace efforts by ruling out recognising Russia’s claim over Crimea, a territory the US president said was “lost years ago”.
Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula in 2014 and then backed rebels in eastern Ukraine.
“This completely corresponds with our understanding, which we have been saying for a long time,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters yesterday, responding to Trump’s remarks.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it will not cede Crimea under any settlement with Moscow.
Russia fired at least 70 missiles and 145 drones at Ukraine between late Wednesday and early yesterday, the main target being Kyiv, the Ukrainian air force said.
Rescuers initially said nine people were killed but interior minister Igor Klymenko later told reporters eight were dead, while more than 70 were injured.
Russia said it had targeted Ukraine’s defence industry, including plants that produced “rocket fuel and gunpowder”.
Loud blasts sounded over the Ukrainian capital at around 01h00 after air raid sirens rang out across Kyiv, AFP journalists on the ground said.
Through the night, rescue workers were scouring through the rubble of destroyed buildings and tackling blazes in apartment blocks.
The interior ministry said damage was recorded at 13 separate locations across the capital.
“Phone calls can be heard from under the rubble – the search will continue until we are confident that we have found everyone,” Klymenko said, adding that two children were unaccounted for.
In the Sviatoshinsky district in the west of Kyiv, an AFP journalist saw a body bag with one of the victims lain out on a strip of grass.
Construction equipment was being used nearby to clear piles of debris from a destroyed building and roofs and windows had been blown off an apartment block.
Moscow’s army has launched some of its most deadly and brazen aerial strikes at Ukraine over the last month – defying Trump’s push to bring about a rapid end to the bloodshed.
A ballistic missile strike on the centre of northeastern city of Sumy killed at least 35 on April 13.
And an attack on Zelensky’s home town of Kryvyi Rig in early April killed at least 19 – including nine children after a missile slammed into a residential area near a children’s playground.
– Nampa/AFP