Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Russian missiles and drones ripped through apartment blocks in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Thursday, killing at least 18 people, including four children, in an attack the US warned undermines peace efforts.
The attack – one of the deadliest on Kyiv – blasted a five-storey crater in one apartment block, ripping the building in two. The European Union mission, a British government cultural building, as well as two media outlets’ offices were also damaged, setting off international protests.
AFP reporters saw rescuers carrying several victims away from the apartment block in body bags throughout the day as they sifted through the smouldering rubble.
“Glass was flying … we were screaming when the bombs went off,” Galina Shcherbak, who was at a parking lot close to one of the strikes, told AFP.
Ukraine’s air force said Moscow fired 629 drones and missiles. That would make it the second-largest overnight barrage of the war, according to AFP analysis of Kyiv’s data.
Andriy, whose flat was destroyed in the strike, told AFP that he had only just made it out alive.
“If I had gone to the shelter a minute later, I would not be here now, I would have been buried.”
“I came out, could not hear anything, there was fog everywhere, and my left eye was completely covered in blood.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack “a horrific and deliberate killing of civilians”.
“The Russians are not choosing to end the war, only new strikes,” he said on social media, calling for Moscow to face fresh sanctions.
“All deadlines have already been broken, dozens of opportunities for diplomacy ruined. Russia must feel accountable for every strike, for every day of this war,” he said.
“These egregious attacks threaten the peace that @POTUS is pursuing,” the US envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg said on X.
Zelensky’s top aides are set to hold a meeting with Trump’s team in New York on Friday.
The Kremlin, which claimed to have targeted military sites, insisted it was still interested in diplomacy, but that its strikes would “continue”.
“The Russian armed forces are fulfilling their tasks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in response to a question by AFP.
“They continue to strike military and military-adjacent infrastructure facilities.”
The European Union and British government summoned Russia’s ambassadors after the barrage damaged the buildings of the EU’s mission and the British Council in Kyiv.
Offices of local media outlets were also damaged.
Inside the EU mission, AFP reporters saw blown-out windows and partially collapsed ceiling panels.
International condemnation was swift.