Russian strikes kill at least 16 people in Kyiv; 6-year-old boy among dead

KYIV - Russia launched waves of missiles and drones on Kyiv before dawn on July 31, killing at least 16 people including a six-year-old boy, and wounding well over 100 others, said officials in the Ukrainian capital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in his nightly video address, put the death toll at 14 and said rescue operations were continuing into the evening.

The interior ministry said more than 1,200 police and rescuers were tackling the aftermath.

Ukraine’s national rescue service said 15 had been killed and 145 injured.

Mr Zelensky said dozens remained in hospital. Fourteen of the injured were children – the largest number of children hurt in a single attack on the city since Russia started its full-scale invasion almost three and a half years ago.

In an earlier post on Telegram, the President said Russia had launched more than 300 drones and eight missiles. “Today, the world has once again seen Russia’s response to our desire for peace... Therefore, peace without strength is impossible,” Mr Zelensky said.

City authorities announced a day of mourning to be held on Aug 1.

Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed it targeted and hit Ukrainian military airfields and ammunition depots, as well as businesses linked to what it called Kyiv’s military-industrial complex.

Explosions rocked Kyiv from about midnight onwards and blazes lit up the night sky.

Mr Yurii Kravchuk, 62, stood wrapped in a blanket next to a damaged building with a bandage around his head.

He had heard the missile alert but did not get to a shelter in time, he told Reuters.

“I started waking up my wife and then there was an explosion. My daughter ended up in the hospital,” he said.

Russia, which denies targeting civilians, has stepped up air strikes in recent months on Ukrainian towns and cities far from the front lines of the war.

Thousands of civilians, the vast majority of them Ukrainian, have been killed since Moscow invaded in 2022.

Kyiv and Moscow have held three rounds of talks in Istanbul in 2025 that yielded exchanges of prisoners and bodies, but no breakthrough to defuse the conflict.

Burning ruins

At one location in Kyiv, rescuers spent more than three hours to reach a man trapped in rubble by cutting through the wall of a neighbouring apartment, the interior ministry said.

The man spoke with emergency services during the operation and was pulled out alive, it added.

A five-month-old baby was among the wounded, with five children hospitalised, said the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Mr Tymur Tkachenko, on national television.

Schools and hospitals were among the buildings damaged across 27 locations in the capital, officials said.

“The attack was extremely insidious and deliberately calculated to overload the air defence system,” Mr Zelensky wrote on social media platform X.

He posted a video of burning ruins, saying people were still trapped under the rubble of one partially ruined residential building as at the morning.

The President said the attacks had killed a six-year-old boy and his mother, but later edited the post to remove the reference to the mother.

A senior US diplomat told the United Nations Security Council on July 31 that President Donald Trump had made clear that

he wants a deal to end the war by Aug 8.

“Both Russia and Ukraine must negotiate a ceasefire and durable peace. It is time to make a deal. President Trump has made clear this must be done by Aug 8,” diplomat John Kelly told the 15-member council.

On July 29, Mr Trump said Washington will

start imposing tariffs and other measures on Russia

if Moscow shows no progress towards ending the conflict.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said: “This is Putin’s response to Trump’s deadlines. The world must respond with a tribunal and maximum pressure.”

The air force reported five direct missile hits and 21 drone hits in 12 locations. Ukrainian air defence units downed 288 drones and three cruise missiles, the air force added. REUTERS