At least 16 people were killed in a new night of Russian bombing on Kiev and its surroundings, Ukrainian authorities reported Thursday, while President Volodymyr Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of “investing” in ballistic missiles to push toward escalation.
Zelensky said: “It is a massive attack, and the Russians have been preparing for it for a long time, and they used different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones to inflict as much damage as possible on civilian infrastructure.”
In the capital, residential buildings, a children's hospital, and a school were damaged in the early hours of the morning, and an Agence France-Presse correspondent said that he saw the body of one of the victims being transported from the place in a car.
According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergei Koretsky, the attack on Kiev and its suburbs continued for approximately 9 hours, and was carried out with dozens of missiles and drones.
In the Boryspil district near Kiev, warehouses containing food supplies and buildings belonging to the Red Cross were damaged. Civilian facilities were also damaged in the Odessa and Chernihiv regions, according to the new prime minister.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed responsibility for night strikes targeting military manufacturing companies, a transportation and logistics center, and warehouses in Kiev and the surrounding area.
Kiev Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, who called for Friday to be declared a day of mourning, said that a fire broke out in a 9-storey residential building in the Solomyansky district of the capital, destroying the upper floors and killing 7 people. Klitschko added via the Telegram application that damage was caused to two other areas, and non-residential facilities, warehouses, a school, and a children's hospital were bombed.
Zelensky said on Thursday, as quoted by Reuters, that Russia attacked the gas infrastructure in the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine, in addition to a border crossing with Moldova in the Odessa region in the south.
In recent weeks, the pace of Russian missile and drone strikes, mainly targeting Kiev and its suburbs, has escalated. According to an analysis by Agence France-Presse, in July, Russia fired a record number of missiles at Ukraine, amounting to 376, more than double the missiles it launched in June.
For weeks, Ukraine has been demanding that the United States provide it with air defense systems to intercept Russian missiles, which are more difficult to shoot down than drones.
Both parties have intensified their attacks in recent months. Which resulted in an increase in the number of civilian casualties.
Zelensky said on Thursday that Moscow had chosen escalation. He said via Telegram: “Unfortunately, while Moscow invests in ballistic missiles and escalation, the world does not always respond appropriately to such attacks,” denouncing Ukraine’s lack of anti-ballistic missile capabilities.
Ukraine says it intercepts most of the drones used by Russia, but it relies on Western weapons shipments, particularly US Patriot missiles, to counter Russian ballistic missiles.
US President Donald Trump initially stated that he would allow Ukraine to produce these missiles locally, before retracting his decision and saying that he was “not sure” about that.
After more than 4 years of war, diplomatic efforts remain stalled. Prisoner exchanges are one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kiev.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that there is no information yet regarding a possible visit to Moscow by the two American presidential envoys. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
Negotiations between Russia and the United States aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine are largely stagnant in light of the war with Iran, which Witkoff and Kushner are also working to end.
On the other hand, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that no meeting has yet been planned between President Vladimir Putin and Vatican envoy Paul Richard Gallagher, who will visit Moscow next week. But Peskov added that Russia greatly appreciates the efforts of countries working to find a solution to the conflict in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia indicated on Thursday that it had intercepted and destroyed 726 Ukrainian drones overnight. The Ukrainian General Staff said on Thursday that the army targeted the Russian Taniko oil refinery in the Tatarstan region, in addition to an oil terminal in the port of Tamanneftegaz in the Krasnodar region. The General Staff reported via the Telegram application that the strikes, which were carried out on Wednesday evening and during the night, caused fires to break out at the two sites.
The Russian Information Agency reported on Thursday, citing the Ministry of Defense, that Russian forces were able to control two villages in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The two villages are Mykolaibelia and Matyashev. Reuters said it was unable to independently verify the accuracy of reports from the battlefield.
On the other hand, the administration of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which is controlled by Russia, said on Thursday that the plant had switched to using diesel-powered emergency generators after damage to a high-voltage power line caused an interruption of external supplies to the facility.
“The station’s employees monitor the operating parameters of the equipment,” the Moscow-appointed administration said. All necessary measures are being taken to maintain the complete safety of the power generation units,” she added, adding that radiation levels are normal.
The plant, which is the largest in Europe and includes six reactors, does not produce any electricity, but it needs power supply through two external lines to keep the nuclear fuel cool. Russia seized control of the station in the first weeks of the war that broke out in 2022, and since then Moscow and Kiev have accused each other of committing military actions that threaten nuclear safety.
In Romania, the country neighboring Ukraine, two Spanish fighter planes and a Romanian army helicopter took off during the night to monitor “targets” near the Ukrainian-Romanian border. It announced that one of its fighter planes destroyed, on Thursday, a naval drone near a gas project in the Black Sea.
Romanian Defense Minister Radu Mirota explained, in a Facebook post, that an F-16 fighter jet intercepted the naval drone “laden with explosives” hundreds of meters away from the “Neptune Deep” gas project in the Black Sea, indicating that the drone was not coming from neighboring Ukraine. A drone entered Romanian airspace before crashing in an uninhabited area near Grindo in the west of the country.
