Russia’s all-night drone attack on Kyiv injures 23, Ukraine says

KYIV - Russia pummelled Kyiv with the largest drone attack of the war, injuring at least 23 people and damaging buildings across the Ukrainian capital only hours after US President Donald Trump spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, officials said on July 4.

Air raid sirens, the whine of kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated from early evening until dawn, as Russia launched what Ukraine’s Air Force said was a total of 539 drones and 11 missiles.

Residents huddled with their families in underground metro stations for shelter. Acrid smoke hung over the city centre.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is due to speak to Mr Trump later on July 4 about the war and a US pause in some deliveries of air defence missiles, called the attack “deliberately massive and cynical”.

“Notably, the first air raid alerts in our cities and regions yesterday began to blare almost simultaneously with media reports discussing a phone call between President Trump and Putin,” Mr Zelensky said on X.

“Yet again, Russia is showing it has no intention of ending the war and terror,” he added, calling for increased pressure on Russia and more air defence equipment.

Kyiv officials said the attack damaged about 40 apartment blocks, passenger railway infrastructure, five schools and kindergartens, cafes and many cars in six of Kyiv’s 10 districts.

Poland said the consular section of its embassy in central Kyiv was damaged, adding that staff were unharmed.

Fourteen of the injured were hospitalised, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Telegram.

Ukraine’s state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia, the country’s largest carrier, said on Telegram that the attack on Kyiv damaged railway infrastructure in the city, diverting a number of passenger trains and causing delays.

Damage was recorded on both sides of the Dnipro River bisecting the city and falling drone debris set a medical facility on fire in the leafy Holosiivskyi district, Mr Klitschko said.

The attacks were the latest in a series of Russian air strikes on Kyiv that have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war on the city of three million people.

Call for sanctions

US President Donald Trump said that a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 3

resulted in no progress at all

on efforts to end the war in Ukraine, while the Kremlin reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict’s “root causes”.

A decision by Washington earlier this week to

halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine

prompted warnings by Kyiv that the move would weaken its ability to defend against intensifying airstrikes and battlefield advances.

Mr Zelensky on July 4 called for increased pressure on Moscow to change its “dumb, destructive behaviour”.

“For every such strike against people and human life, they must feel appropriate sanctions and other blows to their economy, their revenues, and their infrastructure,” he said.

Sheltered

Ukraine’s Air Force said that it had destroyed 478 of the air weapons Russia launched overnight. Enemy air strikes were recorded in eight locations across the country with nine missiles and 63 drones, it added.

Social media videos showed people running to seek shelter, firefighters fighting blazes in the dark and ruined buildings with windows and facades blown out.

Late on July 3, Russian shelling killed five people in and near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a key target under Russian attack for months, Ukraine said.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion on Ukraine in February 2022. Thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

Many more soldiers are believed to have died on the frontlines, although neither side releases military casualty figures.

Late on July 3, Russian shelling had killed five people in and near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a key target under Russian attack for months, Ukraine said. REUTERS