A large-scale Russian drone and missile attack across Ukraine killed at least six people, including a woman and her two young daughters, officials said Wednesday, as US-led efforts to end the war floundered and Ukraine’s president appealed for more military help.
Repeated waves of missiles and drones throughout the night shook at least eight Ukrainian cities, including a village in the Kyiv region where a strike set fire to a house in which the mother and her 6-month and 12-year-old daughters were staying, regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said.
At least 18 people were injured in Kyiv alone, authorities said.
The barrage, which began at night and extended into Wednesday morning, also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and caused rolling blackouts, officials said. Russia has been trying to cripple the country's power grid before the bitter winter sets in.
US President Donald Trump's efforts to end the war that started with Russia's all-out invasion of its neighbor more than three years ago have failed to gain traction. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to budge from his conditions for a settlement after Ukraine offered a ceasefire and direct peace talks.
Trump said Tuesday his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.”
Zelenskyy urged the European Union, the United States and the Group of Seven industrialized nations to heap more pressure on Russia and force it to the negotiating table.
Pressure can be applied on Moscow “only through sanctions, long-range (missile) capabilities, and coordinated diplomacy among all our partners,” he said.
Zelenskyy credited Trump's remarks that he was considering supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for Putin's willingness to meet.
Zelenskyy was set to visit Stockholm on Wednesday, where he's expected to meet with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson at the start of what the Ukrainian leader has said will be a week of intense diplomacy.
More international economic sanctions on Russia are likely to be discussed at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, while on Friday, a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing — a group of 35 countries who support Ukraine — is due to take place in London.
Also Wednesday, Trump is expected to hold talks at the White House with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. The military alliance has been coordinating deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, many of them purchased from the United States by Canada and European countries.
In Kyiv, residents reeled from the drone and missile bombardment.
“We heard a loud explosion and then the glass started to shatter, and then everything was caught up in a burst of fire, the embers were everywhere,” Biriukova Olena, a 58-year-old resident of a city apartment building told The Associated Press. “It was very scary for kids, I never thought that this could happen in our neighborhood.”
The attack caused damage in the cities of Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia, as well as Odesa, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Vinnytsia, and the wider regions of Kyiv, Cherkasy, and Sumy, Zelenskyy said.
Two more people were found dead in the Dnipro district of the Ukrainian capital, where emergency services rescued 10 people after a fire caused by drone debris hit the sixth floor of a 16-story residential building, local authorities said.
The attack also blew out windows of a medical facility and debris was found at another residential building, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko reported on his Telegram channel.
In the Darnytskyi district of the capital, emergency services were responding after drone debris hit a 17-story residential building causing a fire on five floors. Fifteen people had to be rescued, including two children.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s army general staff said the country’s forces struck a chemical plant in Russia’s Bryansk region Tuesday night using British-made air-launched Storm Shadow missiles. The plant is an important part of the Russian military and industrial complex producing gunpowder, explosives, missile fuel and ammunition, it said.
