‘Massive enemy attack’: Russia pounds Ukraine’s Kyiv, killing one

The Ukrainian capital’s Mayor Vitaly Klitschko says a pregnant woman is among several injured and hospitalised.

A “massive” Russian attack on Kyiv has killed one person and wounded at least 15 others, Ukraine’s state emergency service said.

More than 40 people also had to be rescued as a result of the overnight assault into Friday, it added, with fires or damage to residential buildings reported in eight of the Ukrainian capital’s 10 districts.

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Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko described it as a “massive enemy attack”, saying that a pregnant woman and a man in an “extremely serious condition” were among the hospitalised.

A 55-year-old man in Bila Tserkva who suffered thermal burns was rushed to hospital, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, the head of the Kyiv region, who said that Russian missiles and drones had targeted critical infrastructure in Kyiv.

Klitschko confirmed that the Russian attack had damaged part of the city’s heating networks, noting that some buildings in the northeastern Desnyansky district were temporarily left without heat.

Ahead of another punishing winter of war, Moscow has intensified its attacks on targets including Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, increasing the risk of heating outages.

Friday morning’s attack also struck residential buildings throughout the Ukrainian capital.

“Russians are hitting residential buildings. There are a lot of damaged high-rise buildings throughout Kyiv, almost in every district,” said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the city’s military administration.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had shot down more than 200 Ukrainian drones overnight.

“During the past night, air-defence assets intercepted and destroyed 216 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles,” it wrote on Telegram.

The latest attack on Kyiv comes two days after G7 foreign ministers reiterated their “unwavering” support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and demanded an immediate ceasefire.

As part of international efforts to hold Russia to account for its actions since it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Canada unveiled new sanctions against Moscow on Wednesday.

The measures targeted the country’s drone and energy production, and infrastructure used to launch cyberattacks.