Three killed in Russian strikes on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials say
The mayor of the city said that three people were killed and at least 29 people were injured in Russia’s air strike on Ukraine’s capital Kiev overnight.
Vitali Klitschko said that two high-rise residential buildings were hit in the attacks and added in his post on Telegram that there were six children among the injured.
Meanwhile, Russian air defenses destroyed a drone heading towards Moscow, according to the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.
The latest Russian bombardment comes as Moscow steps up attacks on civilian targets and energy infrastructure ahead of winter; Ukrainian officials said nearly 1,200 drones were launched last week alone.
Authorities in Kiev said three people were killed and 24 people were injured in the same attack when a drone crashed into a nine-story residential building in the Desnianskyi district in the city’s northwest.
Damage to at least three residential buildings in Kiev was also reported. Authorities said that 7 people, including 2 children, were treated at the hospital.
Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022 and it now controls about a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimean peninsula it annexed in 2014.
While there is marginal movement on the front lines as the conflict on the ground continues, Ukraine is trying to harm Russia’s fighting ability by hitting military production facilities and oil facilities that are vital to its economy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently called on his allies to provide their armed forces with long-range weapons to enable them to continue doing so.
But he recently returned from a White House meeting and subsequent EU summit empty-handed.
US President Donald Trump, like the EU, this week announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s largest oil companies – the first time he has done so in his current term.
Trump said the meeting “went nowhere” as he scrapped plans to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Budapest over the war in Ukraine.
Heading to Asia over the weekend, Trump said he had a “great relationship” with Putin but that recent events were “disappointing”, suggesting that a meeting between the two was conditional on a peace deal being likely.
Trump appears increasingly frustrated with Russia’s conditions for ending the war, and a summit in Alaska in August failed to deliver any concrete results.
The US president has previously said new sanctions against Moscow depend on European allies cutting energy imports from Russia. The EU has promised to achieve this by 2028.
Zelensky accepted the US proposal to cease fighting on existing front lines so that peace negotiations could begin; however, this does not meet Russia’s demands for a complete withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the eastern Donbas region.
But top Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who met with US officials in Washington on Friday and Saturday, told CNN he believes Russia, Ukraine and the US are close to a diplomatic solution to end the war.
“It’s a big move for President Zelensky to admit that this is about battle lines,” Dmitriev said.
“You know, his previous position was for a complete Russian withdrawal, so I think we’re actually pretty close to a diplomatic solution that can be resolved.”
