12 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine in fresh night of strikes
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An explosion of a drone lights up the sky over the city during a Russian drone strike in Kyiv on May 25.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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KYIV - Russia launched a record number of drones against Ukraine and killed 12 people across the country, officials said on May 25, even as Kyiv and Moscow completed their biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” as Russia launched a second straight night of massive air strikes on Ukraine, including on the capital Kyiv.
The attacks came even as the two countries completed their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000 captured soldiers and civilian prisoners exchanged by each side.
The death toll from the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the north-western region of Zhytomyr, officials said.
Their school named the dead children as Roman, Tamara and Stanislav in a post on Facebook, saying: “Their memory will always be with us. We will never forgive”.
“Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
“The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only encourages Putin,” he said, adding: “Sanctions will certainly help.”
The European Union’s top diplomat, Ms Kaja Kallas, called for “the strongest international pressure on Russia to stop this war”.
“Last night’s attacks again show Russia bent on more suffering and the annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims harmed and killed,” she said on social media.
The renewed strikes came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones overnight on May 23 to 24, which wounded 15, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military said early on May 25 it had shot down 45 Russian missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.
Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said a total of 298 drones were launched, adding that this was “the highest number ever”.
Four people were reported dead in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region and one in Mykolaiv in the south.
Emergency services said 16 people were also injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack”.
“We saw the whole street was on fire,” a 65-year-old retiree, Ms Tetiana Iankovska, told AFP in Makhalivka village, just south-west of Kyiv.
Another retiree who survived the strikes, Mr Oleskandr, 64, said he had no faith in talks around a ceasefire.
“We don’t need talks, but weapons, a lot of weapons to stop them (the Russians). Because Russia understands only force, nothing else,” he said.
Major prisoner exchange
Mr Zelensky said that, even with the ramped-up hostilities, he expected the prisoner swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16 to continue.
On May 24, 307 Russian prisoners of war were exchanged for the same number of Ukrainian soldiers, according to announcements in Kyiv and Moscow. Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on May 23.
They are expected to exchange 1,000 each in total. The two enemies have held regular prisoner swaps, but this would be the largest so far, if completed.
Russia has signalled it will send Ukraine its terms for a peace settlement after the exchange, without saying what those terms would be.
An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a hospital in the northern Chernigiv region, emaciated but smiling and waving to crowds waiting outside.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” 31-year-old Konstantin Steblev, a soldier, told AFP after he was released following three years in captivity.
Diplomatic push
US President Donald Trump on May 23 congratulated the two countries for the swap.
“This could lead to something big???“ he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Mr Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.
One of the soldiers formerly held captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, told AFP it was hard to express his emotional homecoming. Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days.
“It’s impossible to describe. I can’t put it into words. It’s very joyful,” he said.
After more than three years of fighting, thousands of POWs are held in both countries. Russia is believed to have the larger share, with the number of Ukrainian captives estimated to be between 8,000 and 10,000. AFP
