Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
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Father, 4-year-old Son Die in Russian Air Attack on Kyiv Region

Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at a site where residential buildings were damaged during a Russian military strike in a location given as Brovary, Kyiv region, Ukraine in this screengrab from handout video released August 11, 2024. State Emergency Service of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS

A 4-year-old boy and his 35-year-old father died when debris from a downed Russian weapon fell on the house they were living in near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday.
A 13-year-old child was among the injured in the attack in the Brovary district, in the Kyiv region just northeast of the capital's metropolitan area, Ukraine's emergency services said on the Telegram messaging app.

Meanwhile, Russia's defense ministry said on Sunday Russian air defense units destroyed 14 Ukraine-launched drones and four Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine.

Sixteen drones were downed over the Voronezh region, several hundred kilometers south of Moscow, and three drones over the border Belgorod region, it said. One drone each was destroyed over the Bryansk and Orlov regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged for the first time on Saturday that Ukrainian forces were fighting in the surprise offensive in Kursk, as the border region's authorities rushed to evacuate civilians from areas at risk.

Moscow's forces are in their sixth day of intense battles against Kyiv's largest incursion into Russian territory since the start of the war, which left southwestern parts of Russia vulnerable before reinforcement started arriving.

In a sign of the gravity of the situation, Russia imposed a sweeping security regime in three border regions on Saturday, while Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow, sent more troops to its border with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of violating its air space.

In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said he had discussed the operation with top Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, vowing to restore justice after Russia launched a full-scale aggression on its smaller neighbour in February 2022.
"Today, I received several reports from commander-in-chief Syrskyi regarding the front lines and our actions to push the war onto the aggressor's territory," he said.
"Ukraine is proving that it can indeed restore justice and ensure the necessary pressure on the aggressor."
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the Ukrainian attack - which military analysts say caught the Kremlin off-guard - as a major provocation.

Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Wednesday the attacks had been halted, but Russia has thus far failed to push the Ukrainian forces back over the border.
Russian military bloggers say the situation had stabilized after Russia's reinforcements, though they said Ukraine was swiftly building up forces.

Early on Sunday, Kursk officials said that 13 people were injured in the city after debris from a destroyed Ukraine-launched missile fell onto a nine-story residential building.
Alexei Smirnov, Kursk's acting governor, ordered local authorities to speed up the evacuation of civilians in areas at risk. On Saturday, Russia's TASS state news agency reported that more than 76,000 people had been evacuated.



Trump Says Biden Left Him ‘Inspirational-Type’ Letter 

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, US, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, US, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Says Biden Left Him ‘Inspirational-Type’ Letter 

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, US, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, US, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said former President Joe Biden left him a "nice" letter inside the Resolute Desk at the White House, continuing an inauguration day tradition.

Trump told reporters he opened the letter on Monday evening and was thinking of making it publicly available. He said Biden advised him to enjoy his term and emphasized the importance of the role.

"It said, 'To Number 47,'" Trump said. "It was a very nice one .... just basically a little bit of an inspirational-type letter. Enjoy it. Do a good job. Important, very important how important the job is."

Trump, who was inaugurated to his second term in the White House on Monday, said he felt he should let people see the letter because it was "a positive" for Biden.

Trump found the handwritten letter in the desk on Monday during a ceremony in the Oval Office after a journalist asked if he had received a message from Biden. He held it up for the cameras, showing a handwritten "47," saying he would read it privately before deciding whether to release its contents.

Trump, the first president since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s to serve nonconsecutive terms, left a letter for Biden when he took office in January 2021. Biden said it was a "very generous" letter but never released it publicly.

Former President Ronald Reagan started the modern letter-writing tradition in 1989, leaving one for his vice president and successor, George H.W. Bush, on stationery marked "Don't let the turkeys get you down."