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  • Children injured in Russian strikes on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials say

    Children injured in Russian strikes on Kyiv, Ukrainian officials say

    Four children were among at least 14 people injured in an overnight Russian air attack on the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

    Two high-rise residential buildings were hit in the strikes, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, without specifying if they were hit directly or as a result of falling debris.

    “Everyone is receiving medical assistance, some have been hospitalised,” Kyiv’s military administration said in a post on Telegram.

    Meanwhile, Russian air defences destroyed a drone heading towards Moscow, according to the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.

    The strikes come as US President Donald Trump said that he would only meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin if he knew that “we’re going to make a deal”, days after plans for the two to meet in Budapest collapsed.

    “I’ve always had a great relationship with Vladimir Putin, but this has been very disappointing,” Trump said on board Air Force One, as he began a week-long trip to Asia.

    “I thought this would have gotten done before peace in the Middle East,” he added.

    Trump also said that he would like China to help efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

    The US president is due to meet China’s President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.

    Ending the Russia-Ukraine war has become a focal point for Trump in recent months, with a ceasefire deal so far eluding him, despite his campaign promises to solve the situation quickly.

    A summit with Putin in August failed to yield any tangible results, and Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Moscow.

    “Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere,” Trump said earlier this week.

    However, senior Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who met US officials in Washington on Friday and Saturday, told CNN that he believed Russia, Ukraine and the US were close to a diplomatic solution to end the war.

    “It’s a big move by President Zelensky to already acknowledge that it’s about battle lines,” Dmitriev said, a reference to the Ukrainian president’s description of using current front lines as the starting point for negotiations as a “good compromise”.

    “You know, his previous position was that Russia should leave completely so actually, I think we are reasonably close to a diplomatic solution that can be worked out,” Dmitriev added.

    Trump this week said that talks with Putin “don’t go anywhere”, as he announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies – Rosneft and Lukoil.

  • Kyiv won’t give up land, says Zelensky as US-Russia summit confirmed

    Kyiv won’t give up land, says Zelensky as US-Russia summit confirmed

    Ukraine won’t surrender land to Russia to buy peace, President Volodymyr Zelensky warned Saturday, after Washington and Moscow agreed to hold a summit in a bid to end the war.

    Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in the US state of Alaska on August 15, to try to resolve the three-year conflict, despite warnings from Ukraine and Europe that Kyiv must be part of negotiations.

    Announcing the summit on Friday, Trump said that “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” Ukraine and Russia, without providing further details.

    “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier,” Zelensky said on social media hours later.

    “Any decisions against us, any decisions without Ukraine, are also decisions against peace. They will achieve nothing,” he said, adding that the war “cannot be ended without us, without Ukraine”.

    Zelensky also urged Ukraine’s allies to take “clear steps” towards achieving a sustainable peace, during a call with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

    National security advisors from Kyiv’s allies — including the United States, EU nations and the UK — were gathering in Britain on Saturday to align their views ahead of the Putin-Trump summit.

    “It is truly important that the Russians do not succeed in deceiving anyone again,” Zelensky said after a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, without elaborating further.

    Three rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine this year have failed to bear fruit, and it remains unclear whether a summit could bring peace any closer as the warring sides’ positions are still far apart.

    Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with millions forced to flee their homes.

    Putin has resisted multiple calls from the United States, Europe and Kyiv for a ceasefire.

    Zelensky said Kyiv was “ready for real decisions that can bring peace” but said it should be a “dignified peace”, without giving details.

    Putin, a former KGB officer in power in Russia for over 25 years, has ruled out holding talks with Zelensky at this stage.

    Ukraine’s leader has been pushing for a three-way summit and has frequently said meeting Putin is the only way to make progress towards peace.

    – Far away from war –

    The summit in Alaska, the far-north territory which Russia sold to the United States in 1867, would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021. This was just nine months before Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.

    Zelensky said of the location that it is “very far away from this war, which is raging on our land, against our people”.

    The Kremlin said the choice was “logical” because the state close to the Arctic is on the border between the two countries, and this is where their “economic interests intersect”.

    Moscow has also invited Trump to pay a reciprocal visit to Russia later.

    Trump and Putin last sat together in 2019 at a G20 summit meeting in Japan during Trump’s first term. They have spoken by telephone several times since January.

    On Friday, Putin held a round of calls with allies, including China and India, in a diplomatic flurry ahead of the summit with Trump, who has spent his first months in office trying to broker peace in Ukraine without making a breakthrough.

    The US president has earlier imposed an additional tariff on India for buying Russia’s oil in a bid to nudge Moscow into talks. He also threatened to impose a similar tax on China, but so far has refrained from doing so.

    – Fighting goes on –

    Away from the talks, across a more than 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) frontline, Russia and Ukraine continued pouring dozens of drones onto each other’s positions in an exchange of attacks in the early hours of Saturday.

    As a result of a Russian strike, a bus carrying civilians was hit in Ukraine’s frontline city of Kherson, killing two people and wounding 16.

    The Russian army claimed to have taken Yablonovka, another village in the Donetsk region, place of the most intense fighting in the east, and one of the five regions Putin sees as part of Russia.

    Four people were killed as of Saturday morning in Donetsk after Russian shelling, Ukrainian authorities said.

    In 2022, the Kremlin announced the annexation four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — despite not having full control over them.

    Russia had previously annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.

    As a prerequisite to any peace settlement, Moscow demanded Kyiv to pull its forces out of the regions and commit to being a neutral state, shun Western military support and be excluded from joining NATO.

    Kyiv said it will never recognise Russian control over its sovereign territory, though it acknowledged securing the return of land captured by Russia would have to come through diplomacy, not on the battlefield.

  • 12 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine in fresh night of strikes

    12 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine in fresh night of strikes

    Russian strikes killed at least 12 people in Ukraine overnight into Sunday, officials said, as Kyiv and Moscow traded fire amid an ongoing major prisoner swap.

    Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” as Russia launched a second straight night of massive air strikes on Ukraine, including on the capital Kyiv.

    The attacks came as the two sides pursued their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and as the United States tries to broker a ceasefire to halt the three-year-old war.

    The death toll from the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr, officials said.

    “Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

    “Sanctions will certainly help,” he said, calling on the United States, European countries and “all those around the world who seek peace” to show their “determination” to make Moscow halt the war.

    Ukraine’s military said early Sunday it had shot down 45 Russian missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.

    Russian meanwhile said it had brought down 110 Ukrainian drones overnight.

    Four people were reported dead in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region and one in Mykolaiv in the south.

    Emergency services said 16 people were also injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack”.

    “We saw the whole street was on fire,” a 65-year-old retired woman, Tetiana Iankovska, told AFP in Makhalivka village just southwest of Kyiv.

    Another retiree who survived the strikes, Oleskandr, 64, said he had no faith in talks around a ceasefire.

    “We don’t need talks, but weapons, a lot of weapons to stop them (the Russians). Because Russia understands only force, nothing else,” he said.

    – Major prisoner exchange –
    The renewed attacks came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones overnight Friday to Saturday, which wounded 15, according to Ukrainian officials.

    Zelensky said that, even with the ramped-up hostilities, he expected the prisoner swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16 to continue.

    On Saturday, 307 Russian prisoners of war were exchanged for the same number of Ukrainian soldiers, according to announcements in Kyiv and Moscow.

    Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on Friday.

    They are expected to exchange 1,000 each in total.

    Russia has signalled it will send Ukraine its terms for a peace settlement after the exchange, without saying what those terms would be.

    The two enemies have held regular prisoner swaps, but this would be the largest so far, if completed.

    An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a hospital in the northern Chernigiv region, emaciated but smiling and waving to crowds waiting outside.

    “It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” 31-year-old Konstantin Steblev, a soldier, told AFP Friday as he stepped back onto Ukrainian soil after three years in captivity.

    – Diplomatic push –
    US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated the two countries for the swap.

    “This could lead to something big?” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

    Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.

    One of the soldiers formerly held captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, told AFP it was hard to express his emotional homecoming.

    Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days.

    “It’s impossible to describe. I can’t put it into words. It’s very joyful,” he said.

    After more than three years of fighting, both countries are holding thousands of POWs.

    Russia is believed to have the larger share, with the number of Ukrainian captives estimated to be between 8,000 and 10,000.

  • Europe leaders head to Kyiv on unprecedented visit

    Europe leaders head to Kyiv on unprecedented visit

    The leaders of France, Britain, Germany and Poland will make an unprecedented joint visit to Ukraine on Saturday for talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky, vowing to ratchet up pressure on Russia until it agrees a ceasefire.

    The trip by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is the first time the leaders of the four European nations have made a joint visit to Ukraine.

    More than three years into Russia’s invasion, the hugely symbolic show of European unity comes a day after President Vladimir Putin struck a defiant tone at a Moscow parade marking 80 years since victory in World War II.

    US President Donald Trump has proposed a 30-day unconditional ceasefire as a step to end the conflict. But Putin has resisted so far.

    “Alongside the US, we call on Russia to agree a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire to create the space for talks on a just and lasting peace,” the leaders said in a statement ahead of the visit.

    “We are ready to support peace talks as soon as possible, to discuss technical implementation of the ceasefire, and prepare for a full peace deal,” they added.

    “We are clear the bloodshed must end, Russia must stop its illegal invasion, and Ukraine must be able to prosper as a safe, secure and sovereign nation within its internationally recognised borders for generations to come”.

    They warned: “We will continue to increase our support for Ukraine. Until Russia agrees to an enduring ceasefire, we will ratchet up pressure on Russia’s war machine.”

    In an interview with the ABC news channel on Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said arms deliveries from Ukraine’s allies must stop before Russia would agree to a ceasefire.

    A truce would otherwise be an “advantage for Ukraine” at a time when “Russian troops are advancing… in quite a confident way” on the front, Peskov said, adding that Ukraine was “not ready for immediate negotiations”.

    – ‘Russia obstructing efforts’ –
    For Merz, who took office only this week, it will be his first visit to Ukraine as chancellor. Macron has not been to Kyiv since June 2022 when he went with the Italian and German leaders of the time.

    In the talks with Zelensky they will make their “steadfast commitment to Ukraine”, the statement said.

    “We, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom will stand in Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia’s barbaric and illegal full-scale invasion,” they said.

    “We reiterate our backing for President Trump’s calls for a peace deal and call on Russia to stop obstructing efforts to secure an enduring peace,” they added.

    After meeting Zelensky in the morning, they are to host a virtual meeting to update other European leaders on moves to create a European force that could provide Ukraine with security after the war.

    Such a force “would help regenerate Ukraine’s armed forces after any peace deal and strengthen confidence in any future peace”, the statement said.

    – ‘Number of symbols’ –
    After meeting Tusk in France on Friday, Macron called for the speedy drawing up of a US-Europe plan for the 30-day truce that would be backed by “massive economic sanctions” if one side “betrays it”.

    Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said at a meeting in Norway on Friday to discuss Ukraine that the “United States has two sanctions packages on the table” and that countries were discussing action in the “banking and the energy sector.”

    Macron said Putin’s “belligerent comments” at the Red Square parade showed he remained “on the side of war”. But he also said talks about territory could be held once a ceasefire starts.

    Russia has occupied about a fifth of Ukrainian territory and has yet to respond to the pressure for an enduring ceasefire. Trump has also said Ukraine will have to consider giving up territory but has expressed growing impatience with Russia’s refusal to halt the fighting.

    The timing of the visit is striking, coming a day after Putin hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping but also Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose country is an EU member, at the Moscow parade.

    A French presidential official, who asked not to be named, said the visit just four days after Merz took office “demonstrates Europe’s unity, strength, and responsiveness. And it mirrors Putin’s celebrations.”

  • Zelensky cuts short South Africa trip after deadly attack on Kyiv

    Zelensky cuts short South Africa trip after deadly attack on Kyiv

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled part of his trip to South Africa on Thursday after Russia fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Kyiv, killing at least eight people and trapping others under rubble.

    Ukraine has been battered with aerial attacks throughout Russia’s three-year invasion, but deadly strikes on Kyiv, which is better protected by air defences than other cities, are less common.

    The attacks threw yet more doubt on already fraught US efforts to push Russia and Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire, hours after US President Donald Trump lashed out at Zelensky for refusing to accept Moscow’s occupation of Crimea as a condition for peace.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin is yet to respond to Zelensky’s proposal to completely halt air attacks on civilian targets, and last month rejected a US-Ukrainian call for a full and unconditional ceasefire.

    “It has been 44 days since Ukraine agreed to a full ceasefire and a halt to strikes… And it has been 44 days of Russia continuing to kill our people,” Zelensky said in a post on X.

    The Ukrainian leader, who was on a trip to South Africa, announced he would return to Ukraine immediately after meeting the country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa.

    “The strikes must be stopped immediately and unconditionally,” he added.

    Rescuers initially said nine people were killed, but interior minister Igor Klymenko later told reporters eight were dead, while more than 70 were injured.

    Rescuers were working to recover people from the rubble of buildings, he added.

    Olena Davydiuk, a 33-year-old lawyer in Kyiv, told AFP she saw windows breaking and doors “falling out of their hinges” during the barrage.

    “People were being pulled out of the rubble. They said that there were dead people there too,” she added.

    – ‘Phone calls under rubble’ –
    Russia fired at least 70 missiles and 145 drones at Ukraine between late Wednesday and early Thursday, the main target being Kyiv, the Ukrainian air force said.

    Of the 215 projectiles, 112 were “confirmed to have been shot down”, it wrote on Telegram.

    Loud blasts sounded over the Ukrainian capital at around 1:00 am (2200 GMT), after air raid sirens rang out across Kyiv warning residents to head to shelters, AFP journalists on the ground said.

    Through the night, rescue workers were scouring through the rubble of destroyed buildings and tackling blazes in apartment blocks. The interior ministry said damage was recorded at 13 separate locations across the capital.

    “Phone calls can be heard from under the rubble — the search will continue until we are confident that we have found everyone,” Klymenko said, adding that two children were unaccounted for.

    In the Sviatoshinsky district in the west of Kyiv, an AFP journalist saw a body bag with one of the victims lain out on a strip of grass.

    Construction equipment was being used nearby to clear piles of debris from a destroyed building, and roofs and windows had been blown off an apartment block.

    A woman sat on a small folded-out chair stroking the arm of another person killed in the attack, the body covered in a striped blue sheet.

    Nearby an AFP journalist saw a first responder talking to a woman wounded in the attack, her face bloodied and bruised as she clutched a dog in her arms.

    – ‘Killing field’ –
    Moscow’s army has launched some of its most deadly and brazen aerial strikes at Ukraine over the last month — defying Trump’s push to bring about a rapid end to the bloodshed.

    A ballistic missile strike on the centre of northeastern city of Sumy killed at least 35 on April 13.

    And an attack on Zelensky’s home town of Kryvyi Rig in early April killed at least 19 — including nine children after a missile slammed into a residential area near a children’s playground.

    Hours before the attack, Trump had said a peace deal was “very close” — and effectively closed with Moscow — but accused Zelensky of being “harder” to negotiate with.

    The Ukrainian president’s refusal to accept US terms for ending the conflict — which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 — “will do nothing but prolong the ‘killing field’,” he said.

    Russia also launched a large-scale attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv overnight, firing at least seven missiles and hitting a “densely populated residential area,” city mayor Igor Terekhov said.

    Separately, Russia’s defence ministry reported downing 87 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 45 over Crimea.

  • Missile strike on Kyiv kills one amid ‘massive’ attack

    Missile strike on Kyiv kills one amid ‘massive’ attack

    A missile attack on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early Sunday killed one person and injured at least three people, city officials said, as missile and drone strikes across the country left at least one more person dead.

    Russia “in the early hours of this morning launched a massive nationwide attack on Ukraine using ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones,” said first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko.

    In Kyiv, explosions were heard overnight and a dark plume of smoke rose up from the city early Sunday morning, AFP journalists saw.

    In the capital, “preliminarily, one person was killed, and three were wounded, two of them were hospitalised,” the head of the city’s military administration, Tymur Tkachenko, wrote on social media.

    City mayor Vitali Klitschko said that “the body of a man killed in an enemy attack was discovered in Darnytsia district. He was on the street, near the epicentre of the explosion. The man’s identity is being established.”

    Emergency services said that during attacks, fires broke out in Kyiv in non-residential buildings, damaging a multi-storey business centre, furniture factory and warehouses.

    The emergency services posted video of smoke rising from charred debris, a gutted hangar and a large multi-storey administrative building with the roof torn off and windows blown out.

    Overnight, Russia attacked Ukraine with 23 cruise and ballistic missiles and 109 drones, the Ukrainian air force said, causing damage to six regions.

    The air force said it shot down 13 of the missiles and 40 drones while 54 others caused no damage.

    In the southern Kherson region, a drone killed a 59-year-old man, while in the northeastern Kharkiv region near the border with Russia two were injured in an attack using guided aerial bombs, regional officials said.

    In western Ukraine’s Khmelnytsky region, authorities said air defences destroyed a missile but falling fragments damaged a house and a woman was injured.

    The attacks come as US President Donald Trump pushes for a partial ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, more than three years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion, and seeks a thaw in ties with the Kremlin.

    Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said Sunday: “The language of force is the only one that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin understands. All our partners need to switch to this language.”

    – ‘Weak reaction’ –
    The latest attacks came two days after a missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rig killed 18 people including nine children on Friday evening.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the US embassy for what he called a “weak” statement that did not blame Russia for the deadly missile strike on his home city.

    In an emotional statement on social media, Zelensky accused the US embassy of avoiding referring to Russia as the aggressor.

    “Unfortunately, the reaction of the American embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such a strong people — and such a weak reaction,” Zelensky wrote.

    “They are even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed the children.”

    The Ukrainian president took aim at the US Ambassador Bridget Brink after she posted a message on X on Friday that said: “Horrified that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant.”

    In subsequent posts, Brink has referred to Russia as the aggressor, writing on Sunday morning that Ukraine was “under a ballistic and cruise missile attack from Russia”.

    – Talks with French, UK military chiefs –
    Trump is pushing the two sides to agree to a ceasefire but his administration has failed to broker an accord acceptable to both.

    Zelensky on Saturday hailed “tangible progress” after meeting British and French military chiefs in Kyiv on Friday to discuss a plan by London and Paris to send a “reassurance” force to Ukraine if and when a deal on ending the conflict is reached.

    The Ukrainian president wrote on social media that the meeting with British Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin and French counterpart Thierry Burkhard agreed “the first details on how the security contingent of partners can be deployed”.

    This is one of the latest efforts by European leaders to agree on a coordinated policy after Trump sidelined them and opened direct talks with the Kremlin.

  • Russia says captured two more Ukraine villages

    Russia says captured two more Ukraine villages

    Russia on Saturday claimed the capture of two villages in eastern and southern Ukraine, pressing ahead with its advance amid stumbling efforts for a ceasefire by US President Donald Trump.

    The defence ministry said Moscow’s forces captured the village of Shchebraki in the southern Zaporizhzhia region and Panteleimonivka in the eastern Donetsk region.

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meanwhile said Russia had launched more than 170 drones into Ukraine overnight, striking targets in the Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Khmelnytskyi regions.

    He said four people were killed in Dnipro, where the strike hit a hotel complex, and 21 others were injured, including a pregnant woman.

    “Russia is making a mockery of peacekeeping efforts around the world. It is dragging out the war and sowing terror because it still feels no real pressure,” Zelensky said.

    For several weeks, the United States has been trying to negotiate a ceasefire in the Black Sea and in strikes targeting energy infrastructure in both nations with both Moscow and Kyiv.

    While both countries have agreed to these truces in principle, their implementation remains unclear and Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of seeking to derail them.

    On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the idea of a “transitional administration” for Ukraine, under the auspices of the UN, an option that would imply Zelensky’s departure, before any peace deal was negotiated.

  • Russian attack on Ukraine cities hits deadly new level

    Russian attack on Ukraine cities hits deadly new level

    At least 30 people have been killed in what Ukraine says is Russia’s biggest missile bombardment of the war so far.

    More than 160 people were injured as Russia hit Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Lviv in the early hours of Friday morning.

    Russia “used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal”, with homes and a maternity hospital hit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

    Ukraine’s air force said it had never seen so many missiles launched at once.

    Kyiv’s air defences have drastically improved in recent months, but on Friday they were overwhelmed.

    An Air Force spokesperson said Russia used hypersonic, cruise and ballistic missiles, including X-22 type, which are difficult to intercept. “We’ve never seen so many targets hit simultaneously,” he added.

    The air force said 114 of 158 missiles and drones had been shot down.

    Black smoke billowed from the different blast sites. We headed to one which was a 200-metre-long warehouse in Kyiv’s Podilskyy district, owned by a construction company. It had been completely hollowed out from the impact.

    It’s a level of devastation only caused by a direct missile strike. For months, mostly falling debris caused the damage and loss of life that Ukrainians constantly fear. A bigger threat has now returned.

    A few kilometres away, glass on one whole side of a skyscraper had been blown off from the force of another impact. Smoke had started to darken the sky. It was a drive through Kyiv which we hadn’t made since the early days of the full-scale invasion.

    Nine people were killed in Kyiv. A metro station that was acting as an air raid shelter was also struck.

    Once again, it wasn’t just Kyiv picking up the pieces either. Authorities claimed more than 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones and 15 missiles targeted the western city of Lviv, somewhere which has often been spared the worst of this invasion.

    The city of Konotop in Sumy Region, close to the country’s northern border, was also hit by a missile. Officials in Odesa say a high-rise building caught fire after being struck by a drone. Four people were killed and 22 were injured, including two children aged six and eight.

    The north-eastern city of Kharkiv is no stranger to missile strikes, but not the 20 it felt on Friday morning. Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said three people were killed and 13 were injured in a series of strikes on the city which damaged a hospital and residential buildings.

    The governor of Dnipropetrovsk region said that six people were killed and 28 were injured in what he called a “tragic morning for the region”. Serhiy Lysak said that a shopping centre and a maternity hospital were targeted in the regional capital of Dnipro. In Zaporizhzhia, eight people were killed after attacks on infrastructure and 13 people were injured.

    One Russian missile even briefly entered Polish airspace as it homed in on its Ukrainian target.

    The UN’s humanitarian envoy for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said the attacks “left a path of destruction, death and human suffering” and were “another unacceptable example of the horrifying reality” Ukrainian people face.

    So why did Russia do this now?

    Its missile stockpiles aren’t what they were, but Moscow has shown it still wants to continue its tactic of suppressing Ukraine’s population, in the hope that not feeling safe will lessen their appetite for this war.

    It’s also been a week when Ukraine destroyed a major Russian landing ship in occupied Crimea, and the US delivered the last of its approved military packages to Ukraine worth $250m.

    However, that is relatively small change compared to the $50bn aid package currently blocked by political disagreement in the US Congress.

    Responding to the latest Russian bombardment, US President Joe Biden described it as “a stark reminder to the world that, after nearly two years of this devastating war, Putin’s objective remains unchanged. He seeks to obliterate Ukraine and subjugate its people. He must be stopped.”

    Maybe the renewed missile attack was revenge, or another statement? A spokesman for Russia’s Defence Ministry simply said “all the designated military targets have been hit”.

    It has always been the whole of Ukraine under Russian attack. The country has been able to defend against most of the invader’s nationwide drone and missile attacks.

    But its ability to keep doing so is far from assured.